“He saw that their distinctive virtue lay in their finitude, their minute particularity, their tortured balance between dullness and lucidity; and that to save them from these would be to annihilate them.”

— Olaf Stapledon , book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XV: The Maker and His Works; 2. Mature Creating (p. 178)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He saw that their distinctive virtue lay in their finitude, their minute particularity, their tortured balance between …" by Olaf Stapledon?

Olaf Stapledon 113

British novelist and philosopher 1886–1950

Related quotes

“These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Preface, 2nd edition (21 December 1847)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Context: p>Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.</p

“The audacity of the man would have seemed sublime if she had felt sure that he knew the difference between good and evil, between a lie and the truth; but the more she saw of him, the surer she was that his courage was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Madeleine Lee assessing Senator Silas P. Ratcliffe in Ch. XIII
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

“But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

In the Neolithic Age, Stanza 5 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

“There is no difference between knowledge and devotion,
Both of them save the soul from the miseries of worldly life.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Tulsidas's philosophical approach, quoted in "Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern", p. 80

“Some saw stars, it seemed, and some saw the spaces between them.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Chapter 13 (p. 215) Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

“He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:
For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 3, plate 55, line 60

“But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"To a Friend" (1849), line 9-12

“The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

“If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Speech to the Commercial Finance Association on October 26, 2006, as reported by the Associated Press ( "Finally, Greenspan can speak his mind" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15428994/ns/business-us_business/t/finally-greenspan-can-speak-his-mind/).
2000s

“there was not much distinction between losing a friend and a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumph, and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“He saw that their distinctive virtue lay in their finitude, their minute particularity, their tortured balance between dullness and lucidity; and that to save them from these would be to annihilate them.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Olaf Stapledon 113

Related quotes

Related topics