Quotes about limitation
page 6

“Most lead lives at worst so painful, at best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principle appetites of the soul.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Source: The Doors of Perception

Pain, Soul

“A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Question

“Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Women, Men

“When you chase a dream, you learn about yourself. You learn your capabilities and limitations, and the value of hard work and persistence.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Chapter 11, p. 187
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)
Source: Three Weeks With My Brother

Dreams, Learning

“This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Source: The Humanity of God

Love, God, Understanding, Appearance

“People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

People, Music, Freedom

“Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Success

“Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

“I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love steak. But there is a limit to my love”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Love

“Just as I had long suspected, a person didn't really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people.”

Augusten Burroughs Possible Side Effects

Source: Possible Side Effects

People, Personality

“We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have many more ways to say it?”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Love, Way

“Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

"Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962)
On Clarke's Laws

Law, Way, Past

“Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?" August said. "And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Love

“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; but where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be.”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Mephistopheles, Act II, scene i, line 118
Doctor Faustus (c. 1603)
Source: Dr. Faustus

Hell

“The promoters of the global economy… see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Another Turn of the Crank

World

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

People, Spring, Happiness

“Still clutching each other by the arm, they turned to watch the last stones plummet over the edge.

“I don't know how many times a day I can stand to watch you almost die,” Seregil gasped.

“Twice is my limit,” croaked Alec, sinking to his knees.”

Lynn Flewelling Luck in the Shadows

Source: Luck in the Shadows

Time

“Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

People, Learning

“He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Idea, Freedom, Perfection

“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Loneliness

“Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.”

Masamune Shirow Ghost in the Shell

Source: Ghost in the Shell

Effort

“Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Life

“Always remember that as long as other people are gullible, there's no limit to what you can achieve.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland

People

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Thinking, Change

“Human sympathy has its limits.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Life, Truth, Solitude

“It is life, more than death, that has no limits.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Life, Death

“There is one grand lie -
that we are limited.
The only limits we have
are the limits we believe.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Lie

“A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader.”

Steven Brust book Iorich

Source: Iorich (2010), p. 172  <br class="br">Context: A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

Stupidity, Error, Personality

“Dangerous? Do you remember what Xavier's power is? Teleportation. Limited Teleportation, They guy can move about 10 feet. Worst thing he could do to me? Poke me in the eyes, and go "Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk" and Zip away before I can smack him," - Elena”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Guy

“Bad news has no limits. We often feel it should, like a rainstorm that can't possibly get any heavier. But a storm can always worsen, & the burdens of life can too.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Life, Feeling

“Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

People, Silence

“It's wrong for libraries to have limited budgets.”

Jo Walton (1964) Welsh Canadian writer

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

Understanding

“No' is golden. 'No' is the kind of power the good witch wields. It's the way whole, healthy, emotionally evolved people manage to have relationships with jackasses while limiting the amount of jackass in their lives.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

People, Way

“I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

People

“Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

Life

“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”

Robert Fritz (1943) American managemetn consultant

Source: The Path of Least Resistance

“No man can take your freedom from you. They can limit your mobility, but that's about all they can do”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Freedom

“you only know yourself when you go beyond your limits”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

“When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

Men

“Don't accept the limitations of other people who claim things are 'unchangeable'. If it's written in stone, bring your hammer and chisel.”

Peter McWilliams (1949–2000) American author and civil liberties advocate

People

“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

As quoted in Bisexual Characters in Film: From Anaïs to Zee (1997) by Wayne M. Bryant, p. 143
Attributed

Love, Fear, Feeling

“(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Game, Waiting

“You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

Summer, Season

“Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Freedom

“If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Source: Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

God

“A promise is a commitment to do something later, and a vow is a binding commitment to begin doing something now and to continue to do it for the duration of the vow. Some vows, or contracts, are for life; others are for limited periods of time.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Life, Time

“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People, World, Color, Light

“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Art

“If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

God, World, Knowledge, Reading

“I would never be popular. I didn't want to be; I liked being shy. I'd never be the smartest or the hottest or the happiest. By eighth grade you start to figure out your limits.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“To know a thing well, know it's limits; Only when pushed beyond it's tolerance will it's true nature be seen.
-The Amtal Rule”

Frank Herbert book Children of Dune

Source: Children of Dune

Nature

“The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had nothewould be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other words, it would not be. But it is. Then it has aThisof the infinite is God.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

God

“Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Learning

“I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion

Understanding, Time

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Men, World, Dreams, Problem

“We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Learning

“Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

People, Fear, Help, Selfishness

“I was told love should be unconditional. That's the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge?”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Love

“Imagination… its limits are only those of the mind itself.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Imagination

“Being productive. Ugh. It's such a human concept. It implies you have limited time (LOL) and have to work hard to make something happen (double LOL).”

Rick Riordan book The Dark Prophecy

Source: The Dark Prophecy

Time

“Why? What is so wonderful about mass murder that nobody in the history of the world has ever fond any smarter solution to problems than killing everybody who doesn’t agree? Is that the limit of human intelligence?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

World, History, Intelligence, Problem

“I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

Stupidity, Feeling

“It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Source: Education, Free & Compulsory

Education, School, Personality

“Start walking. When you hit a spot where you’re gasping for breath, that should tell us our limitations. (Xypher)
Oh, joy. I can’t wait to be the guppy. (Simone)
Glub, glub, little fishy. Start walking. (Xypher)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Waiting, Joy

“Limit love and you limit life.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Love, Life

“Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer”

Eric Metaxas (1963) American journalist

Source: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

God

“Pain was their body's way of telling them that they'd pushed themselves to their limits -- which was exactly where they were supposed to be.”

Richard Marcinko book Rogue Warrior

Source: Rogue Warrior

Pain, Way

“I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.”

Paul Krugman book The Conscience of a Liberal

Source: The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), Ch. 13. The Conscience of a Liberal http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=5887. W. W. Norton & Company. 352 pages ISBN 978-0-393-06069-0, 1st edition (2007)

Law, Democracy, Support, Wealth

“If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Understanding

“The original sin is to limit the Is.”

Richard Bach book Illusions

—Don't.
Source: Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

Dreams, Evil

“Human sympathy has its limits, and we were contented to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Light

“Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love, Women, Sleep

“As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Forbidden Reading, p. 281.
Source: A History of Reading (1996)

Reading

“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

World, History, Time, Reading

“My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Life, Beauty, Way

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Death, Fear, Suffering

“Every man finds his limitations, Mr. Holmes, but at least it cures us of the weakness of self-satisfaction.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Source: Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs

Love, Dance

“People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored.”

Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Life, People, Despair

“Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Love, Hope

“Why limit yourself to just one best friend?”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

“Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Money, People, Sex

“The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Love, Time, Personality

“There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information

Wisdom, World, Fools, Understanding

“There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited.”

Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

World, Peace, Memory, Forgetting

“There's something wrong in not appreciating one's own special abilities, my girl. Find your own limitations, yes, but don't limit yourself with false modesty.”

Anne McCaffrey Dragonsinger

Source: Dragonsinger

Girl, Falseness

“We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

Time

“… morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996) <br class="br">Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.<br>The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Feeling, Suffering, Evil, Indifference

“Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

Source: The Thief's Journal

World

“The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

“I love you dammit,"she brushed her lips teasingly against his.

"How much?" He made a slight sound, as if the soft kiss had affected him intensely.

"Without limit. Beyond forever.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Love, Kiss

“Everything has two endings-
a horse, a piece of string, a phone call.

Before a life, air.
And after.

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Come, Thief: Poems

Life, Silence, Horse

“Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

Vol. 1, p. 17
The Foundations of a Creed (1874-5)

“I had the good fortune of having my first and only heart attack last January … I call it good fortune because it taught me that there's a limited amount of time left and I better concentrate on one thing: How come existence? How come the quantum? Maybe those questions sound too philosophical, but maybe philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

As quoted by Amanda Gefter (from the symposium in honor of Wheeler's 90th birthday) [Trespassing on Einstein's lawn: a father, a daughter, the meaning of nothing, and the beginning of everything, 2014, https://books.google.com/books?id=NUMkAAAAQBAJ]

Question, Time, Heart

“Get the process of negotiation away from the small specialized group that some people have called the "nuclear theologians," who in effect said this is a complicated issue of seeing how little we can give away, how much we can extract from the other side; it's highly specialized. Only a few people can understand the nature of these weapons, the delivery systems, the targeting, the nature of the MIRV and the CRUISE, on down, and the MX. This kept the whole discussion to a very limited group of people who, in a way, had assumed responsibility for saying whether we should live or die.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)

People, Way, Understanding, Nature

“The necessity for fiction was probably born of the problem of taboo on certain revelations. It was not only a need of the imagination but an answer to the limitations placed on portrayal of others.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

Imagination, Problem

Quotes about limitation page 6

Quotes about limitation
page 6