Essence Quotations

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

The essence of my work, and of me, is the softer side of a strong woman, and that goes into a number of different roles.

As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.

Real laughter is spontaneous. Like water from the spring it bubbles forth a creation of mingled action and spontaneity - two magic potions in themselves - the very essence of laughter - the unrestrained emotion within us!

Our mind is like a cloudy sky: in essence clear and pure, but overcast by clouds of delusions. Just as the thickest clouds can disperse, so, too, even the heaviest delusions can be removed from our mind.

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.

Matisse draws what I call the essence of the plants. He leaves a shape open. He'll do a leaf and not close it. Everybody used to say, oh, I got it all from Matisse, and I said, 'Not really.'

Their eagerness for the big-band music and their ability to grasp the essence of it made me realize that today's generation has not been properly exposed to the big-band sound.

The true essence of comedy is a baby seal hunt.

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.

There is something about my aura or essence, or whatever, that draws the ex-wife characters to me. I don't seek them out, but people tend to think of me for that particular archetype, or whatever you want to call it, and I don't mind it. I think there is a strength to it.

In its famous paradox, the equation of money and excrement, psychoanalysis becomes the first science to state what common sense and the poets have long known - that the essence of money is in its absolute worthlessness.

As soon as science has solved one problem, new ones arise. This is the essence of science, and it applies, of course, also to the field of essential oils.

The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.

The essence of a general's job is to assist in developing a clear sense of purpose . to keep the junk from getting in the way of important things.

Funk is the absence of any and everything you can think of, but the very essence of all that is. And saying that, I'm saying funk is anything that we create in our minds that we want to do, what we want to be, but we don't have the resources.

Pirates are the very essence of profit maximising entrepreneurs described in neoclassical economics. Yet, whilst films such as 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' have gone a long way to popularise both pirates and outlaw behaviour, the truth of the matter is that piracy is illegal, and it kills.

He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self sacrifice.

When you're a teenager, your essence is so specific to being a teenager, and everything becomes so extreme. Your emotions are on the surface, and you oscillate between different things at one time.

I'm always uneasy with messages. I think if there is a message, it's about taking control of your life. Not becoming a victim. Be true to yourself. In essence it's about love in the drug culture.

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.

Many people think that discipline is the essence of parenting. But that isn't parenting. Parenting is not telling your child what to do when he or she misbehaves. Parenting is providing the conditions in which a child can realize his or her full human potential.

I would be willing to do almost anything to make Art happy. I care about our friendship. The only thing I won't do is change the essence of my work.

'Spice Girls' is about unifying the world - every age, every gender, everyone. It's woman power, it's an essence, a tribe.

What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude.

The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you're trying to accomplish.

Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar.

Love is the essence of life; love touches all of our work. Love never leaves us. It clings to us, and we cling to it.

Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object.

The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you.

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

Science sometimes falls short when trying to fathom the depths of our essence - and our inspiration comes from that essence.

The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant.

I grew up with a lot of fairy tales. And they had an essence of darkness to them.

We are visual creatures. When you doodle an image that captures the essence of an idea, you not only remember it, but you also help other people understand and act on it - which is generally the point of meetings in the first place.

How can you consider flower power outdated? The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated?

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence.

Sometimes, when you live a life at such a wild edge, an extreme edge of experience, you can come back into the world - if you come back at all - with some essence from that experience that people find useful.

Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.

You can get the true essence of New Yorkers by just hanging out in Central Park

It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Human history in essence is the history of ideas.

I love spring flowers: daffodils and hyacinths are the ultimate flower for me. They are the essence of spring.

For a selfie, it's not about the pose, it's about you. There's a reason why you look great in the picture or you look great in real life, because someone has caught the essence of who you are, and a pose is not you.

While traveling around the world, I've had the opportunity to work with every living beauty icon. I've learned to appreciate idiosyncrasy. The fact is, there is really no such thing as 'normal' - everybody's different, and that is the essence of their beauty.

A good team, like a good show, comes into being when the separate individuals working together create, in essence, another separate higher entity - the team - the show - which is better than any of those individuals can ever be on their own.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

Fantasy allows you bend the world and the situation to more clearly focus on the moral aspects of what's happening. In fantasy you can distill life down to the essence of your story.

What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space - and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time.

The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.

'St. Trinian's' is probably taking it to the extreme, but in essence it's saying, 'If you be yourself, you can do whatever you want,' and it's sort of a fun message.

We can never intimidate and discourage the people who voice their words with courage. The essence of freedom rests precisely here - in the freedom of expression of the people. And we must protect it.

In medicine as well as in romantic poetry, it is the heart that is the center and controlling mechanics of life. If the heart stops, life stops. The loss of sight doesn't not mean death. Yet for ages, the eyes was believed to contain a human being's vital essence - a not wholly irrational belief.

Freedom of expression - in particular, freedom of the press - guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.

Every soul and spirit has some degree of continuity with the universal spirit, which is recognized to be located not only where the individual soul lives and perceives, but also to be spread out everywhere in its essence and substance, as many Platonists and Pythagoreans have taught.

The essence of conservative ideology is its being anchored in the divine order of things.

What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era.

Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple.

I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, A picture book is the essence of an experience.

If there is one creature that represents my essence, it's butterflies.

Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.

The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.

I think you need to, as an architect, understand the essence of a place and create a building that feels like it resonates with the culture of a place. So my buildings in India or in Kansas City or in Arkansas or in Singapore, they come out different because the places are so different.

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.

Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules, it ceases to be a religion, as it kills responsibility which is an essence of the true religious act.

If we had no hope - for a cure, for winning the lottery, for falling in love, for the end of war, for being free of abuse, or for having food, warmth, clothing, and shelter - we would have no reason to go on. What you hope for doesn't matter, but rather the essence of hope itself.

The essence of America - that which really unites us - is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion - it is an idea - and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.

Character is the essence of all that a man has seen in life and regards as high and exalted. Character is like truth: the substance of the things that a man has forgotten but the substance of the things that are worth remembering in life.

But the ability to articulate what you are doing, to be clear about it, and to stick to it is, I think, the essence of political leadership.

The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.

I wish to note that intellectual property theft by a government represents the very essence of organized crime.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

I never have used any other artist as a model for a sound or a song. It always has to come from an emotion, and capturing the essence of that emotion in a song.

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

The ever quickening advances of science made possible by the success of the Human Genome Project will also soon let us see the essences of mental disease. Only after we understand them at the genetic level can we rationally seek out appropriate therapies for such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disease.

Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

If you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin.

A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.

Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so.

Sure, I could of done it different... put my clown in a closet and dressed up in straight clothing. I could of compromised my essence, and swallowed my soul.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

Hawking has violated the unspoken rules of atheism. He isn't supposed to use words like 'create' or even 'made.' They necessitate a Creator and a Maker. Neither are you supposed to let out that the essence of atheism is to believe that nothing created everything, because it's unthinking.

I spend my life studying that book, and every book I've written has in some sense been a book about the Bible, and that's what I mean by reclaiming its value and its essence for a world that no longer treats it literally and no longer reads it traditionally.

Curiosity is the essence of human existence. 'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?' I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions. I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out.

I want to be defined by my own essence.

And there is a difference between the essence of a Sacrament and its use.

I'd rather be dealt with as a person than a persona. With my children, I'm just 'Mom.' At the end of the day, the position is just a position, a title is just a title, and those things come and go. It's really your essence and your values that are important.

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.

The essence of Hinduism is the same essence of all true religions: Bhakti or pure love for God and genuine compassion for all beings.