Quotes about surroundings (915 quotes, page 2)

“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them. We need comprehensive workman’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. Also, friends, in the interest of the working man himself, we need to set our faces like flint against mob-violence just as against corporate greed; against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage-workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of employers.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Life , Women , Men , Books

“This is the Church’s destination: it is, as the Bible says, the “new Jerusalem”, “Paradise”. More than a place, it is a “state” of soul in which our deepest hopes are fulfilled in superabundance and our being, as creatures and as children of God, reach their full maturity. We will finally be clothed in the joy, peace and love of God, completely, without any limit, and we will come face to face with Him! (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). It is beautiful to think of this, to think of Heaven. We will all be there together. It is beautiful, it gives strength to the soul. … At the same time, Sacred Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this marvellous plan cannot but involve everything that surrounds us and came from the heart and mind of God. The Apostle Paul says it explicitly, when he says that “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Other texts utilize the image of a “new heaven” and a “new earth” (cf. 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1), in the sense that the whole universe will be renewed and will be freed once and for all from every trace of evil and from death itself. What lies ahead is the fulfillment of a transformation that in reality is already happening, beginning with the death and resurrection of Christ. Hence, it is the new creation; it is not, therefore, the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being, of truth and of beauty.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"General Audience", in Saint Peter's Square (26 November 2014) https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20141126_udienza-generale.html.
2010s, 2014

Love , Death , God , Children

“The spirit has no voice, because where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body space is occupied, and this prevents the eye from seeing what is placed behind that space; hence the surrounding air is filled by the body, that is by its image.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1900s, A Free Man's Worship (1903)

Life , Pain , Hope , Night

“The assumption that the human psyche possesses layers that lie below consciousness is not likely to arouse serious opposition. But… there could just as well be layers lying above consciousness… The conscious mind can only claim a relatively central position and must put up with the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as it were surrounds it on all sides. Unconscious contents connect it backward with the physiological states on the one hand and archetypal data on the other. But it is extended forward by intuitions which are conditioned partly by archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious.”

C.G. Jung book Psychology and Alchemy

Source: Psychology and Alchemy (1952), p. 132

Lie , Lying , Time , Dependency

“All that business was awful, it was a fuckin' humiliation. One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent. I didn't know, I didn't foresee. It happened bit by bit, gradually, until this complete craziness is surrounding you, and you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand — the people you hated when you were ten.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: As quoted in Rolling Stone (7 January 1971) , and requoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith, 1978 ISBN 0094602204

Hate , People , Business

“My life carries its own meaning in itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which shows itself in my will-to-live, the idea of reverence for life. With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I produce values.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.
In reverence for life my knowledge passes into experience. The simple world- and life-affirmation which is within me just because I am will-to-live has, therefore, no need to enter into controversy with itself, if my will-to-live learns to think and yet does not understand the meaning of the world. In spite of the negative results of knowledge, I have to hold fast to world- and life-affirmation and deepen it. My life carries its own meaning in itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which shows itself in my will-to-live, the idea of reverence for life. With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I produce values.

Life , Idea , Perseverance

“Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 1
Context: Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.

Time , Forgetting

“The surrounding forest, as though in a mist,
Was blue in the powder of smoke.
But there, far off, in a disordered ridge,
Which was yet eternally proud and calm,
Stretched the mountains — and Kazbek
Gleamed with its sharp peak.
And with secret, heartfelt sorrow
I thought: 'Pitiable man.
What does he want! The sky is clear,
Beneath it there is much room for all,
But constantly and vainly
He alone wages war — why?”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"I am writing to you..." (1840)
Poems

War , Secret , Mountain

“At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg. 306-307
Against Method (1975)
Context: Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes has more detailed classifications of animals and plant than contemporary scientific zoology and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physicians (while the pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (voodoo), they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the pyramids; Polynesian travels), there existed a highly developed and internationally known astronomy in the old Stone Age, this astronomy was factually adequate as well as emotionally satisfying, it solved both physical and social problems (one cannot say the same about modern astronomy) and it was tested in very simple and ingenious ways (stone observatories in England and in the South Pacific; astronomical schools in Polynesia - for a more details treatment an references concerning all these assertions cf. my Einfuhrung in die Naturphilosophie). There was the domestication of animals, the invention of rotating agriculture, new types of plants were bred and kept pure by careful avoidance of cross fertilization, we have chemical inventions, we have a most amazing art that can compare with the best achievement of the present. True, there were no collective excursions to the moon, but single individuals, disregarding great dangers to their soul and their sanity, rose from sphere to sphere to sphere until they finally faced God himself in all His splendor while others changed into animals and back into humans again. At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.

Intelligence , Idea , Sense , Learning

“Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981)

“Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos”

H.P. Lovecraft book From Beyond

"From Beyond" Written November 16, 1920, published June 1934 in The Fantasy Fan, 1
Fiction
Context: What do we know … of the world and the universe about us? Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have.

Idea , Nature , Sense

“The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 102
Context: When Christianity becomes conscious of its innermost nature, it realizes that it is godliness rising our of inward constraint. The highest knowledge is to know that we are surrounded by mystery. Neither knowledge nor hope for the future can be the pivot of our life or determine its direction. It is intended to be solely determined by our allowing ourselves to be gripped by the ethical God, who reveals Himself in us, and by our yielding our will to His.

Knowledge

“God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

Love , God , People

“The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913)
Context: The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.

World , Childhood

“It might be wiser for me to avoid Camarina and say nothing of theologians. They are a proud, susceptible race. They will smother me under six hundred dogmas. They will call me heretic and bring thunderbolts out of their arsenals, where they keep whole magazines of them for their enemies. Still they are Folly's servants, though they disown their mistress. They live in the third heaven, adoring their own persons and disdaining the poor crawlers upon earth. They are surrounded with a bodyguard of definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit, and propositions implicit. …They will tell you how the world was created. They will show you the crack where Sin crept in and corrupted mankind.”

Desiderius Erasmus book The Praise of Folly

as quoted by James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 http://books.google.com/books?id=5tB4L4J9hlYC (1899)
The Praise of Folly (1511)

World , Personality

“I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.”

Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, the first human in space

As quoted in Earth's Aura (1977) by Louise B. Young
Context: What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth.... The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots.... When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.

Color , Light

“Discretion, like the hole in a doughnut, does not exist except as an area left open by a surrounding belt of restriction.”

Ronald Dworkin book Taking Rights Seriously

Taking Rights Seriously (1978), p. 31
Context: Discretion, like the hole in a doughnut, does not exist except as an area left open by a surrounding belt of restriction. It is therefore a relative concept. It always makes sense to ask, "Discretion under which standards?" or "Discretion as to which authority?"

“At the level of ordinary consciousness the individual man is the centre of everything, surrounded on all sides by what he isn't.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 1: The Motive For Metaphor http://northropfrye-theeducatedimagination.blogspot.ca/2009/08/1-motive-for-metaphor.html
Context: At the level of ordinary consciousness the individual man is the centre of everything, surrounded on all sides by what he isn't. At the level of practical sense, or civilization, there's a human circumference, a little cultivated world with a human shape, fenced off from the jungle and inside the sea and the sky. But in the imagination anything goes that can be imagined, and the limit of the imagination is a totally human world.

“To make a decision you need to be in a perfect environment: you have to be motivated and surrounded by the right people.”

Niki Lauda (1949–2019) Austrian former Formula 1 racing driver

People , Perfection , Decision , Motivation

“Surround yourself with people that make you believe in your power.”

Ralph Smart

Making love , People

“In this era, the old things are being swept away and the new things are still being born. But until this historical era reaches its culmination, all certainty will remain an exception. People sense that everything about their everyday lives is a little out of order, out of order to a terrifying degree. All of us must live within a certain historical era, but this era sinks away from us like a shadow, and we feel we have been abandoned. In order to confirm our own existence, we need to take hold of something real, of something most fundamental, and to that end we seek the help of an ancient memory, the memory of a humanity that has lived through every era, a memory clearer and closer to our hearts than anything we might see gazing far into the future. And this gives rise to a strange apprehension about the reality surrounding us. We begin to suspect that this is an absurd and antiquated world, dark and bright at the same time. Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies, producing a solemn but subtle agitation, an intense but as yet indefinable struggle.”

Eileen Chang (1920–1995) Chinese writer and screenwriter

2. "Writing of One's Own" (pp. 17–18)
Liuyan [《流言》] (1968)

Time , Future , People , Heart

“Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods? I don’t know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature’s responses. Today I believe we have to slow down our rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world. We need to reconnect with our real surroundings.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

On the coronavirus and environmental crises. Cited in Pope salutes 'saints next door' in fight against coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/pope-salutes-saints-next-door-fight-against-coronavirus-hyprocrisy in the Guardian. (8 April 2020)
2010s, 2020

Understanding , Learning , Revenge , Nature

“The darkness isn't afraid of coming close to me, my fear of loneliness draws him towards me. Darkness surrounds me and despair takes hold of me. I start to torment my loneliness, and my silence begins to take my life. When I call my happiness darkness always turns happiness way. Darkness is not afraid of me coming close to me, my fear pulls it to me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Drawing , Silence , Happiness , Loneliness

“The darkness isn't afraid of coming close to me, my fear of loneliness draws him towards me. Darkness surrounds me and despair takes hold of me. I start to torment my loneliness, and my silence begins to take my life. When I call my happiness darkness always turns happiness way. Darkness is not afraid of me coming close to me, my fear pulls it to me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Drawing , Silence , Happiness , Loneliness

“In the measure that love for the flesh prevails in you, you can never become brave and dauntless, on account of the host of adversaries that constantly surround the object of your love.”

Isaac of Nineveh (640–700) Eastern Orthodox saint

Source: The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, p. 115

Love

“⁠The surrounding world is different for each of us, despite moving in a common world”

Pedro Fernando book Train To Save The World

Pedro Fernando, Book Train To Save The World (2022) - (PAULO FERNANDO FAZENDA MANUEL)

World

“The genetic expression within any given cell at any given time is not “fixed,” as many people think it is. It is not a static thing. Rather, it is continually adapting to both external and internal stimuli – meaning that it adjusts to the environment and to any changes in the surroundings, as well as to any changes within the body itself.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

People , Change , Time , Thinking

“When we opened the doors, we saw that the entire room was scorched black and you were on the floor possibly dead, surrounded by broken glass. Window glass is expensive, you realize that?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," he said meekly.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

Dead

“History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.”

James Fenimore Cooper book The Last of the Mohicans

Source: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Ch. 18

Love , History

“Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Life , Men

“Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety.

At any rate that afforded me some comfort.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Silence

“The desert surrounds your every step and you walk forever a thirsty man.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Creatures of Forever

“Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943) American biographer

People , Fear

“Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

People

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Faith , Dogs , Question

“Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, “Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters.”
More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

God

“There are no limits when you are surrounded by people who believe in you, or by people whose expectations are not set by the short-sighted attitudes of society, or by people who help to open doors of opportunity, not close them.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

People , Help

“You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

Pain

“A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”

Daniel Handler (1970) American novelist, children's writer, creator of Lemony Snicket

Sea

“I'd been convinced I was on the outside, but really, I'd always been within arm's reach. All I had to do was ask, and I, too, would be easily brought back, surrounded and immersed, finding myself safe, somewhere in between.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is always possible to be happy.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

Books , World , Happiness

“If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

People , World , Thinking , Personality

“Christ surrounded himself with beggars, prostitutes, tax-collectors and fishermen…. what he meant by this was that the divine spark is in every soul and is never extinguished…”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Soul , Christ

“We all agree it's too big to keep up with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it, so we center it all in by swigging Scotch from the bottle and when it's empty I run out of the car and buy another one, period.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Life , Cars , Understanding

“I don't know how I could sleep at night, not knowing I was surrounded by a thousand other sleeping, dreaming souls. - pg 120, Jem to Tessa & Will”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Dreams , Soul , Sleep , Night

“I sounded like Horton the Elephant. "A person is a person no matter how small." What the hell was I doing standing in the middle of a cave, in the dark, surrounded by wererats, quoting Dr. Seuss, and trying to kill a one-thousand-year-old vampire?”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Quotes , Hell , Personality

“You might be surrounded by clouds, but you'll be like sunshine to me.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Variant: Don't worry, little dhampir. You might be surrounded by clouds, but you'll always be like sunshine to me.
Source: Shadow Kiss

“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil
Context: "Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles."
He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose a wonderful machine."

Fight

“If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed into something wholly unfamiliar, surrounded by the cloth-of-gold bedcover like a deity on an altar, passionless and calculating.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

God , Clothes

“… and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Depressing

“The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Life , Feeling , Silence

“Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us every day.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”

Laurie Colwin (1944–1992) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

Wisdom , Past , Cooking

“Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“A guy can do far far worse than surrounding himself with people who restore his faith in humanity.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

People , Faith , Guy

“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

Lance Armstrong book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

For Team , Imagination

“May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young.”

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

Truth , Courage , Light , Strong

“But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Source: Northanger Abbey: a play in two acts, based upon the novel

Family , Way

“Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light”

Alan Brennert (1954) American writer

Source: Moloka'i

Light

“We are surrounded by poetry on all sides…”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“Surrounded by stories surreal and sublime, I fell in Love in the Library once upon a time.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Love , Time

“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Source: The Book of Tea

Life , Art

“Even though we often mess up, most of us are doing the best that we know how with the circumstances that surround us.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

“Around us the night creatures have their say. We are surrounded by a symphony of crickets and frogs. Neither of us feels the need to speak, and I suppose that is one of the qualities I find comforting in Kartik. We can be alone together.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Feeling , Night

“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“When you're surrounded by stupidity, self-preservation isn't a sin.”

Meljean Brook (1977)

Source: Riveted

Stupidity

“We are surrounded by story.”

Alice McDermott (1953) American writer, novelist, essayist

“Lord Peter Wimsey: Books…are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club (1928)
Source: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

Books

“In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Country

“Grief makes you feel alone, but you're not. I know you don't believe in-in religion-the same way I do, but you can believe you're surrounded by people who love you, can't you?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love , People , Religion , Way

“When God looks at you, he doesn’t see you; he sees the One who surrounds you. That means that failure is not a concern for you. Your victory is secure.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Grace for the Moment

God , Failure , Victory

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

Misattributed
Source: thought to be Gibson's words as a result of Twitter attribution decay, despite repeated disavowals. https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144940064990961664 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941061578559488 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941447936884736 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/171091202161131520. The source, according to Gibson, is Steven Winterburn https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/119133581598666752 https://twitter.com/5tevenw/status/73091190475595776. However, Steven Winterburn is NOT the original creator of that quote. The original quote is the creation of Twitter account holder "@debihope" https://twitter.com/debihope?lang=en. See research by quoteinvestigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/25/diagnose/.

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