Obscure quotes
103 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system."
"People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music."
"In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed."
"If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece."
"It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure."
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"Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification."
"I strive to be brief, and I become obscure."
"Contemporary societies have lost the sense of the feast but have kept the obscure drive for it."
"I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book."
"The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible."
"He who knows himself to be profound endeavors to be clear; he who would like to appear profound to the crowd endeavors to be obscure."
"Facts can obscure the truth."
"In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled."
"If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one."
"She was sad with an obscure sadness of which she had not the secret herself. There was in her whole person the stupor of a life ended but never commenced."
"When I started playing solo 10 years ago, I had some ham-fisted idea about trying to subvert the "singer-songwriter" tag/genre, and I tried to obscure my identity into the identity of a collective or band or whatever. That's part of the reason that I used to play with backing tapes and why so much of my early stuff was so awash in tape hiss and echo noise."
"Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and thatto compress it further can only make it more obscure?"
"I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure."
"We refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation"
"We allow words to obscure the interpretation of the deeper meaning."
"Obscure, like muddy waters."
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure."
"The function of a great library is to store obscure books."
"Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid."
"I try to make those references. I try to make sure that they're not too obscure. But outside of that, I dare not claim anything in the spiritual realm for my own."
