Quotes about singular (220 quotes, page 3)

“There exist moments in life, separated by long intervals of time, but linked together by their inner content and by a certain singular sensation peculiar to them.”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

A New Model of the Universe (1932)
Context: There exist moments in life, separated by long intervals of time, but linked together by their inner content and by a certain singular sensation peculiar to them. Several such moments always recur to my mind together, and I feel then that it is these that have determined the chief trend of my life.

Life , Time

“The mathematician speculates the causes of a certain sensible effect, without considering its actual existence; for the contemplation of universals excludes the knowledge of particulars; and he whose intellectual eye is fixed on that which is general and comprehensive, will think but little of that which is sensible and singular.”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

"A Dissertation on the Doctrine of Ideas, &c."
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788)

Knowledge , Thinking , Universe

“You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Introduction
Cosmopolis (1892)
Context: You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land. It is so, now in the case of an artist, a person seeking for instruction and change; now in the case of a business man who desires to escape the consequences of some scandalous error; now in the case of a man of pleasure in search of new adventures; in the case of another, who cherishes prejudices from birth, it is the longing to find the "happy mean;" in the case of another, flight from distasteful memories. The life of the cosmopolite can conceal all beneath the vulgarity of its whims, from snobbery in quest of higher connections to swindling in quest of easier prey, submitting to the brilliant frivolities of the sport, the sombre intrigues of policy, or the sadness of a life which has been a failure. Such a variety of causes renders at once very attractive and almost impracticable the task of the author who takes as a model that ever-changing society so like unto itself in the exterior rites and fashions, so really, so intimately complex and composite in its fundamental elements. The writer is compelled to take from it a series of leading facts, as I have done, essaying to deduce a law which governs them.

World , Understanding , Painting

“Generally regarded as the foremost scholar, Don Panyong is equally deserving of popular encomium for the singular distinction which he has achieved in several other fields of human endeavour.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Cayco, Libardo D. Epifanio de los Santos Cristobal. Manila, National Heroes Day. University of the Philippines. 1934.
BALIW

“The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together — a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected.
In this research, the gloriole of individual gentlemen, and of separate States, is of little consequence. The means and the measures are the proper objects of investigation. These may be of use to posterity, not only in this nation, but in South America and all other countries.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1810s, What do we mean by the American Revolution? (1818)
Context: The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits had so little resemblance, and their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise. The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together — a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before effected.
In this research, the gloriole of individual gentlemen, and of separate States, is of little consequence. The means and the measures are the proper objects of investigation. These may be of use to posterity, not only in this nation, but in South America and all other countries. They may teach mankind that revolutions are no trifles; that they ought never to be undertaken rashly; nor without deliberate consideration and sober reflection; nor without a solid, immutable, eternal foundation of justice and humanity; nor without a people possessed of intelligence, fortitude, and integrity sufficient to carry them with steadiness, patience, and perseverance, through all the vicissitudes of fortune, the fiery trials and melancholy disasters they may have to encounter.

History , Time , Perfection , Country

“Cleverness of speech was a quality which nearly all the young men of the time sought to attain, but Cato was singular in his keeping up the severe traditions of his ancestors in labouring with his own hands, eating a simple dinner, lighting no fire to cook his breakfast, wearing a plain dress, living in a mean house, and neither coveting superfluities nor courting their possessors.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Marcus Cato, sec. 4
Parallel Lives

Time , Housing , Light , Cooking

“Technological singularity is inevitable given the human nature to discover, create, and change the world that we live in.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

World , Change , Nature

“Simple old-fashioned death, the kind that predated the singularity, used to be the inevitable halting state for all life-forms. Fairy tales about afterlives notwithstanding.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.”
Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397

Fashion , Life , Death

“Talk you of tradition in middle of singularity.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Sister Seventh twisted her head around to look out the windows at the foggy evening drizzle beyond. “Perplexity maximizes. Not understand singularity is discontinuity with all tradition? Revolution is necessary; deconstruct the old, ring in the new. Before, I questioned your sapience. Now, your sanity questionable; sapience not. Only sapient organism could exhibit superlative irrationality!”
Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 144)

“The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

“When beasts went together in companies, there was said to be a pride of lions; a lepe of leopards; an herd of harts, of bucks, and of all sorts of deer; a bevy of roes; a sloth of bears; a singular of boars; a sownder of wild swine; a dryft of tame swine; a route of wolves; a harras of horses; a rag of colts; a stud of mares; a pace of asses; a baren of mules, a team of oxen; a drove of kine; a flock of sheep; a tribe of goats; a sculk of foxes; a cete of badgers; a richess of martins; a fesynes of ferrets; a huske or a down of hares; a nest of rabbits; a clower of cats, and a kendel of young cats; a shrewdness of apes; and a labour of moles.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 22
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Collective nouns

Cats , Horse , Swine

“What captured the heart and soul of the discerning listener was his uncanny craftiness and skill, the unfailing imaginative flights, rhythmic continuity and singular charm, making their lasting impact.”

Bhimsen Joshi (1922–2011) Indian vocalist

Critique

Imagination , Soul , Making love , Heart

“Rufus is one of those singular musical talents who both transcends and makes a mockery of fashion. It would not matter in which musical era he chose to materialise, but that his voice and his sensibility would be recognised as unique, timeless and without peer.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

Sting, House of Rufus box set

Music , Fashion , Making love

“Entire islands and groves of memory suddenly sprung up and I found myself face to face with a deeper awareness of what I can only describe as numerous versions of my singular self and my solitary destiny, pencil sketches of possibility bitch hoe slut thot saw myself as a clown, a poet, a slave, an orator, a prophet and a beggar and a healer and a warrior.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Angels and Shakespeare, p. 114).
Book Sources, I Made My Boy Out of Poetry (1998)

Self-confidence , Bitch , Memory

“The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero... Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence.
1920 - 1930, Point and line to plane, 1926

Silence

“In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him — shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the luxury of twilight — but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it — and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Taylor (February 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Tree , Sun , Beauty , Nature

“All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel. I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess - and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue - a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn:
Warhammer 40,000 Works, Eisenhorn (novel series), Xenos

Fear , Drawing , Pain , Life

“That noble Lord is of opinion, not only that we ought to exclude Natives from office, but that even by encouraging them to study the arts and learning of Europe, we are preparing the way for the utter destruction of our power in India. I must leave it to the noble Lord to explain what seems to me a rather singular inconsistency in his opinion. I am at a loss to understand how, while utterly contemning education when it is given to Europeans, he should regard it with dread when it is given to Natives. This training, we are told, when given to a European, makes him a bookworm, a twaddler, a man unfit for the active duties of life; but give the same education to the Hindoo, and it arms him with such an accession of intellectual power, that an established government, with an army of 250,000 men, backed by the whole army and navy of England, are to go down inevitably before its irresistible power.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (24 June 1853) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1853/jun/24/government-of-india-bill-adjourned#column_758
1850s

Loss , Study , Understanding , Learning

“Life is given in its own way, in a completely unique way, even though this singular mode of givenness is universal. Life is given in such a way that what it gives is given to itself and that what it gives to itself is never separated from it, not in the least. In this way, what life gives is itself. Life is self-givenness in a radical and rigorous sense, in the sense that it is both life that gives and life that is given. Because it is life that gives, we can only have a share of this gift in life. No road leads to life except life itself. [...] Life is absolute subjectivity inasmuch as it experiences itself and is nothing other than that experience. It is the pure fact of experiencing itself immediately and without any distance. This is what constitutes the essence of every possible community. Again, what is shared in common is not some thing; instead, it is this original givenness as self-givenness. It is the internal experience that brings to life everything that is and makes what is alive in this experience become alive in and through it alone.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Source: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 120
Source: Books on Phenomenology and Life, Material Phenomenology (1990)

Communication , Universe , Self-confidence , Way

“I am an individuation of Divinity, an expression of God, a singularization of The Singularity. There is no separation between me and God, nor is their any difference, except as to proportion. Put simply, God and I are one.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God

Quotes about singular page 3

Quotes about singular
page 3