Quotes about level
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“To fear God is first of all to see, on the level of action, consequences in causes, sanction in sin, suffering in error; to love God is first to choose God, that is to say, to prefer what brings one nearer Him over what estranges from Him.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2005, Stations of Wisdom, World Wisdom, 102, 978-0-94153218-1]
God, Reverential fear and love

Love, God, Fear, Error

“If seafood is expensive then don't eat it. Leave it to the wealthy. I cannot ensure equality in this manner. If you want to eat expensive items then you must work hard and find a lot of money....We cannot pull everyone to the same level.”

Prayut Chan-o-cha (1954) Thai military officer, junta chief, and politician

3 July 2015
Source: [National Broadcast by General Prayut Chan-o-cha, Prime Minister –July 3, 2015, http://www.thaigov.go.th/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=93453:93453&Itemid=399&lang=en, Royal Thai Government, 8 August 2015]

Money

“The now is inseparable from who you are at the deepest level.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 5 Who You Truly Are

“Many things in your life matter but only one thing matters absolutely. It matters whether you succeed or fail in the eyes of the world. It matters whether you are healthy or not healthy, whether you are educated or not educated. It matters whether you are rich or poor. It certainly makes a difference in your life. Yes, all these things matter, relatively speaking. But they don't matter absolutely. There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who your are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self. You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 5

Life, World, Education, Peace

“O, wither’d is the garland of the war!
The soldier’s pole is fall'n; young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remark
Beneath the visiting moon.”

Cleopatra VII (-69–-30 BC) last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt

As quoted, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act III, (1623)

Men, War, Girl, Boy

“All struggle becomes celebration, ultimately, in the mind of the Master, who understands that every circumstance and condition has been produced co-jointly, by all of the Souls collaboratively creating that experience or that event, in order that each of the Souls might have a perfect contextual field within which to announce and to declare, to express and to fulfill at the next level, Who They Really Are. This is about spiritual growth. This is about spiritual expansion. This is about the Soul’s evolution.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Soul, Understanding, Perfection

“The heart is the bridge between the mind and the soul. First get out of your mind and into your heart space. From there it is a quick jump into your soul. When you are in your heart space with another, that is when you can have a real soul talk. When you are in your heart space with yourself, that is when you can experience connecting with your soul at a very deep level. That is when you can experience communion with God.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God, Soul, Heart

“Life is full of screwups," he said, chucking another paper at the split-level before taking the corner. "You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existence.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Life, Parting

“I don't know if people have gotten ruder or if my tolerance level has declined.”

Tim Gunn (1953) American actor and fashion consultant

People

“To increase desires to an unbearable level whilst making the fulfillment of them more and more inaccessible: this was the single principle upon which Western society was based.”

Michel Houellebecq book The Possibility of an Island

Source: The Possibility of an Island

“The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

Dreams, Thinking, Time, Dead

“… in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.”

Judith Lewis Herman (1942) American psychiatrist

Women, Men

“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 1
Context: Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.

Funny

“Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“The only real limitation on your abilities is the level of your desires. If you
want it badly enough, there are no limits on what you can achieve.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“The deepest level of worship is praising God inspite of pain, trusting Him during a trial, surrendering
while suffering, and loving Him when He seems distant.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Love, God, Pain, Suffering

“You can never have too much coffee”, I said
He turned and smiled at me. “You think so, but the rest of us get a little OD’ed on your level of caffeine.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Blood Noir

Source: Blood Noir

Smile, Coffee, Thinking

“Ranger declined the butterscotch pudding, not wanting to disrupt the consistency of his blood sugar level. I had two puddings and coffee, choosing to keep my pancreas at peak performance. Use it or lose it is my philosophy.”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

Coffee

“I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs.”

Lester Grinspoon (1928–2020) American physician

Source: Marihuana Reconsidered

Education

“It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of all strength.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“They keep saying that sea levels are rising an all this. It's nowt to do with the icebergs melting, it's because there's too many fish in it. Get rid of some of the fish and the water will drop. Simple. Basic science.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

3 Minute Wonder, Episode 4
On Nature
Source: The Ricky Gervais Show - First, Second and Third Seasons

Fish, Water, Science, Sea

“The way Leo figured it, he spent more time crashing than he did flying. If there was a rewards card for frequent crashers, he'd be, like, double platinum level.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Way, Time, Flying

“Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level”

Gustave Flaubert book November

Source: November

Soul

“You really get to meet people on such a personal level. There's a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Variant: There’s a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you. - Rolly
Source: Just Listen

People, Personality

“At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Something to Tell You

People, Fear

“Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish?”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

“(Nykyrian spun about at the sound, his blaster leveling at the body in the doorway.)
Whoa. Friend! (He tapped his chest twice.) Really good guy. ‘Member me? (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Guy

“We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, Books

“We took the elevator back down from the first observation level of the Eiffel Tower and started walking in he direction of the Taj Mahal”

D.J. MacHale The Soldiers of Halla

Source: The Soldiers of Halla

“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Imagination, Heart

“The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment

Thinking

“Sorry. Was it awful?”
“Being a rat? No. First it was disorienting. I was suddenly at ankle-level with everyone. I thought I'd drunk a shrinking potion, but I couldn't figure out why I had this urge to chew used gum wrappers.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“Wondering aloud, If we were orcs, wouldn't we, at a racial level, ourselves to look like elves?”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying
the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I
now enjoy.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Failure, Understanding, Past

“When a poor man gives something, that is a sacrifice indeed. When a rich man gives something, it hardly rises to the same level.”

David Baldacci (1960) American author

“Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Time

“The dog has seldom been successful in pulling Man up to its level of sagacity, but Man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"An Introduction", The Fireside Book of Dog Stories (Simon and Schuster, 1943); reprinted in Thurber's Dogs (1955)
From other writings

Dogs, Success

“Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you…”

Banana Yoshimoto (1964) Japanese writer

“Nobody got murdered before lunch. But nobody. People weren't up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both the blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

People

“On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor.”

Robert M. Sapolsky book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Thinking

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Funny

“Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.”

Alison McGhee (1960) American novelist

Source: All Rivers Flow To The Sea

World, Way, Water

“how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

People, Way

“The one conclusion I have reached is that whiskey is a great leveler. You might be a hotshot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.”

Vikas Swarup book Q & A

Source: Q & A

Drink

“Passionately obsessed by anything we love--an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels, rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts. Without the power of that love….”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Love, Fear, Way, Passion

“The complexity embedded in the different levels of meaning that go along with the words "I love you" ought to be a whole mindfuck of a video game”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Game

“If you have read 6,000 books in your lifetime, or even 600, it's probably because at some level you find 'reality' a bit of a disappointment.”

Joe Queenan (1950) American writer

Source: One for the Books

Books, Disappointment, Reality, Reading

“Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Art, Time

“No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue
Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears
will keep me from coming back to you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

Fear, Mountain, Tear, Sea

“I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.”

Anna Kamieńska (1920–1986) Poet, writer and translator

Understanding, Learning

“Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.”

Fiona Wood (1958) British–Australian physician and plastic surgeon

Source: Six Impossible Things

“When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Way

“You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Truth, Exercises, Thinking

“Growing up is a trap," snapped Dr. Robbins. "When they tell you to shut up, they mean stop talking. When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Reach a nice level plateau and settle there, predictable and unchanging, no longer a threat.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“You're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

People, Hell

“We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There are two levels of vampirism: one is the regular vampire, which is just like it has always been; and then there's the super vampires, which are a new breed we've created.”

Guillermo del Toro (1964) Mexican film director

“It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep… a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Tempt Me at Twilight

Angels, Soul, Mountain, Star

“The measure of mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“Demonic activity levels? Do they have a device that measures whether the demons inside the house are doing power yoga?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Simon to Clary, pg. 340
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Housing

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth

People, Books, Time, Reading

“Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Active Side of Infinity

Fear, Forgetting

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

Scott Dikkers (1965) American comic writer

Source: You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

“People hear you on the level you speak to them from. Speak from your heart, and they will hear with theirs.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

People, Heart

“Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

Empire of the Senseless (1988), Elegy for the World of the Fathers, Part I, Rape by the Father, p. 12
Context: The German Romantics had to destroy the same bastions we do. Logocentrism and idealism, theology, all supports of the repressive society. Property's pillars. Reason which always homogenizes and reduces, represses and unifies phenomena or actuality into what can be perceived and so controlled. The subjects, us, are now stable and socializable. Reason is always in the service of the political and economic masters. It is here that literature strikes, at this base, where the concepts and actings of order impose themselves. Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.

Literature

“Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

Intelligence

“At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient… only the universe rearranging itself.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are - Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life

Universe

“To ponder is not to brood or grieve or even meditate. It is to wonder at a deep level.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It

“Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

History

“There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.”

Nathaniel Branden (1930–2014) Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer

“The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Way, Intelligence, Knowledge, Study

“The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Truth

“I have always hated crowds. I like deserts, prisons, and monasteries. I have discovered, too, that there are fewer idiots at 3000 meters above sea level than down below.”

Jean Giono (1895–1970) French writer

Source: An Italian Journey

Hate, Sea

“one of the good things about being a woman is that my level of testosterone poisoning is lower than most men's.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Obsidian Butterfly

Source: Obsidian Butterfly

Men

“The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

1871
Correspondence, Letters to George Sand

Stupidity, Dreams, Democracy

“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Family, Imagination, Loyalty

“The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level.”

Alfred Korzybski book Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

Source: Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

“You don't know whether chimps are going to kill you or kiss you. They're very open on some levels and much more evil in a certain way.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Way, Kiss, Evil

“American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People, Secret

“Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Life, Knowledge, Thinking, Time

“An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.”

Richard Louv (1949) American journalist

Source: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

World, Education, School, Help

“There's a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level, and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Life, People, Universe

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”

Alain de Botton book The Architecture of Happiness

Source: The Architecture of Happiness

Beauty

“God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

God

“When you bring an idealised relationship down to the level of an ordinary one it isn't necessarily the ordinary one that suffers'.”

Winston Graham (1908–2003) British writer

Source: Warleggan

Suffering

“I mean, we're all going to die. We know that on an intellectual level. We figure it out when we're still fairly young, and it scares us so badly that we convince ourselves we're immortal for more than a decade afterwards.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

“Juno MacGuff: I was out handling things way beyond my maturity level.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

Source: Juno: The Shooting Script

Way

“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”

Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 123

Fashion

“Now… well, after what happened in Tartarus, it seemed like Percy had graduated to a totally different level of butt-kickery.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Bird, Strong

“In matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Universe, Heart

“All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.”

David Nicholls book Starter for Ten

Source: Starter for Ten

Life, People, Age, Nature

“Because on some level, even though it never turns out to be true, and even though I should know better, I still expect life to be like the movies.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

Life

“Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Fear

“Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Money, World, Way

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Oprah.com http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Life-Lessons-We-All-Need-to-Learn-Brene-Brown#ixzz28s3kPWdP <br class="br">Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead <br class="br">Context: Belonging is not fitting in... Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. When we don't have that, we shape-shift and turn into chameleons; we hustle for the worthiness we already possess.

World, Sense