Obscurity Quotes

It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world.

Criss Jami

If you desire the path of sincerity, develop a love for obscurity. Flee from the clatter and clinks of fame. Be like the roots of a tree; it keeps the tree upright and gives it life, but it itself is hidden underneath the earth and eyes cannot see it.

Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Samuel Johnson

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

Jim Carrey

Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.

Mark Twain

Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.

Neil Gaiman

The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

Adrienne Rich

Obscurity is the realm of error.

Marquis De Vauvenargues

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

Mae West

The street to obscurity is paved with athletes who can perform great feats before friendly crowds.

George Allen

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

Virginia Woolf

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

Lionel Trilling

Obscurity brings safety.

Aesop

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.

Henri Frederic Amiel

This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.

Blaise Pascal

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

Eric Hoffer

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.

Marshall McLuhan

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

Thomas Hardy

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenb