Trans Quotes

1. "She thought human thoughts and stone thoughts. The latter were slow, patchily coloured, textured and extreme, both hot and cold. They did not translate into the English language, or into any other she knew: they were things that accumulated, solidly, knocked against each other, heaped and slipped."
Author: A.S. Byatt

2. "And this is the ultimate lesson that our knowledge of the mode of transmission of typhus has taught us: Man carries on his skin a parasite, the louse. Civilization rids him of it. Should man regress, should he allow himself to resemble a primitive beast, the louse begins to multiply again and treats man as he deserves, as a brute beast. This conclusion would have endeared itself to the warm heart of Alfred Nobel. My contribution to it makes me feel less unworthy of the honour which you have conferred upon me in his name."
Author: Alfred Nobel

3. "She thought of sex as the Star Trek transport.You vaporized and found yourself navigating another planet within the second or two it took to realign."
Author: Alice Sebold

4. "Could a literary life be referred to with the iambic pentameter of, say, harnessing wind power, transplanting hearts or saving the whales. Or did it necessitate the sombre and monotonous dirge of software, priority banking or turbine building."
Author: Anita Nair

5. "Now, years later, I can translate that lesson into: safe isn't always better than sorry. Sometimes you need sorry to appreciate the safe. And sometimes safe is just plain boring. Rayna's probably going through a combination of both right now. And who am I to say what's right and what's wrong?And what is the law to say how she should live?The law prohibits Half-Breeds. Am I really that bad? The law is like a one-size-fits-all T-shirt. And how often do those shirts really fit everyone?"
Author: Anna Banks

6. "I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff."
Author: Annie Dillard

7. "The reference in 1 Corinthians 11:27 is to Christ's actual body, which was crucified, as the reference to blood makes evident. Anaziõs has been translated 'in an unworthy manner,' and sometimes incorrectly thought to modify not the way of partaking but the character of the persons partaking. But Paul refers to those who are partaking in an unworthy manner, not those who in themselves are unworthy, which presumably Paul would see as including any and all believers. No one is worthy of partaking of the Lord's Supper; it's not a matter of personal worth. Paul is rather concerned with the abuse in the actions of the participants, or at least some of them. Paul says that those who partake in an unworthy manner, abusing the privilege, are liable or guilty in some sense of the body and blood of Jesus. They are, in addition, partaking without discerning or distinguishing 'the body."
Author: Ben Witherington III

8. "Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling."
Author: Bill Evans

9. "The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been there. As a matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces."
Author: C.G. Jung

10. "The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson."
Author: D.R. Khashaba

11. "[God says] Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

12. "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.Never shall I forget that smoke.Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.Never."
Author: Elie Wiesel

13. "All girls know that they can be anything now. That transformation is to me one of the most satisfying things."
Author: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

14. "What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press."
Author: Esther Dyson

15. "Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories."
Author: George Eliot

16. "[On Chopin's Preludes:]"His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power."
Author: George Sand

17. "It comes over me that I had then a strange alter ego deep down somewhere inside me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight bud, and I just took the course, I just transferred him to the climate, that blighted him once and for ever."
Author: Henry James

18. "If there were a man who dared to say all that he thought of this world there would not be left him a square foot of ground to stand on [. . .]If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If any man ever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world."
Author: Henry Miller

19. "As farmers or owners, the poor peasants possess a piece of land. The excellent means of transport enables them often to sell their goods. At the very worst they can mostly provide their own food."
Author: Herman Gorter

20. "Let us being again. To take some examples: why should "literature" still designate that which already breaks away from literature—away from what has always been conceived and signified under that name—or that which, not merely escaping literature, implacably destroys it? (Posed in these terms, the question would already be caught in the assurance of a certain fore-knowledge: can "what has always been conceived and signified under that name" be considered fundamentally homogeneous, univocal, or nonconflictual?) To take other examples: what historical and strategic function should henceforth be assigned to the quotation marks, whether visible or invisible, which transform this into a "book," or which still make the deconstruction of philosophy into a "philosophical discourse"?"
Author: Jacques Derrida

21. "A brick could be utilized to teach the danger of procrastination. Ignoring the brick and pretending everything will work itself out is not going to transform it into a wall."
Author: Jarod Kintz

22. "The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities, the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic. This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. We may find ourselves asking, 'Why am I here? What is life? Who am I?' Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions. What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. In this lies its power of transformation. It is a present actual fact. Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea. The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks and that what he seeks is the source of the inquiry."
Author: Jean Klein

23. "Our problem, from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher."
Author: Jean Piaget

24. "And in the end, it is not our love that overcomes hate at all. It is God's. And preemptive love is not just something God does as a one-off transaction. Preemptive love is who God is, constantly overcoming our hateful rebellion and our lesser passions that belie the self-interest we suppose ourselves to be pursuing."
Author: Jeremy Courtney

25. "I was raised as a Christian but the transaction has to be made by yourself - you and God - at some point."
Author: Jerry B. Jenkins

26. "Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all."
Author: John Berger

27. "The Internet is a testament to a connected system that works - it's a global network where any computer can reach another, and easily transfer information across."
Author: John Collison

28. "Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. It uses all of you but is not careful with what is most fragile or irreplaceable. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, Wonder often brings along dubious friends: doubt, jealousy, greed. Together they take over; rearrange the furniture in every one of your rooms for their own comfort. They speak odd languages but make no attempt to translate for you. They cook strange meals in your heart that leave odd tastes and smells. When they finally go are you happy or miserable? Patience is always left holding the broom."
Author: Jonathan Carroll

29. "Barge traffic on the Mississippi River represents the most efficient, most cost-effective, most environmentally sound means of transporting commodity goods from this region of the country to market."
Author: Leonard Boswell

30. "I don't know if watching Chaz Bono will turn your kids into transsexuals, but I'm pretty sure that letting them watch Keith Ablow will turn them into assholes"
Author: Lewis Black

31. "I ran this through my "girl talk" translator and said, "I could eat him, if either of you'd like. Seems like it might be the easiest thing to do."-Bram to Nora & Pamela"
Author: Lia Habel

32. "I think any woman can be transformed by a beautiful dress and high heels."
Author: Linda Gray

33. "We define learning as the transformative process of taking in information that, when internalized and mixed with what we have experienced, changes what we know and builds on what we can do. It's based on input, process, and reflection. It is what changes us."
Author: Marcia Conner

34. "I wanted to share the experience of how yoga and meditation have transformed my life, how they have enabled me to observe who I am, first in my body, and then emotionally, and on to a kind of spiritual path."
Author: Mariel Hemingway

35. "Pride, oh pride—a friend from the past, a bodyguard of the present, and an enemy of the future. Books, oh books—a friend from the past, a soul mate of the present, and a protector of the future. Slowly, softly, and surely through the pages of the past, I have found a new me. There were so many things to learn and so many things remaining to learn. I delight in the truth of why some books I will read, and other I will not. The truth is: I was not choosing. In pleasing myself with books, I transform myself. And I've found sometimes the most amazing keys to unlocking a different part of me in the strangest of books. I go to libraries and there they are waiting for me. I love them, and they love me."
Author: Mark O'Brien

36. "Before parents accept the wisdeom of a school board to cut school librarians, they should ask: Will my child graduate with a 21st-century resume, or a 19th-century transcript? . . . As the information landscape becomes ever more complex, why does a school district want to abandon its professional guides to it?"
Author: Mark Moran

37. "Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated - the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind.""Like instructions for programming a VCR."
Author: Neal Stephenson

38. "It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable."
Author: Northrop Frye

39. "...I opened my eyes as if to a new beginning; nothing I saw was familiar to me, my head was empty, no thoughts, everything quite clean and the sky transparently blue, and I didn't know what I was called or even recognize my own body. Unnamed, I floated around looking at the world for the first time and felt it strangely illuminated and glassily beautiful..."
Author: Per Petterson

40. "Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:silence of paintings. You language where all languageends. You timestanding vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.Feelings for whom? O you the transformationof feelings into what?--: into audible landscape.You stranger: music. You heart-spacegrown out of us. The deepest space in us,which, rising above us, forces its way out,--holy departure:when the innermost point in us standsoutside, as the most practiced distance, as the otherside of the air:pure,boundless,no longer habitable."
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

41. "Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough."
Author: Ram Dass

42. "The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion."
Author: Richard Avedon

43. "They named me Kristin after some whale scientist in Australia, worked on the original translation team."
Author: Richard K. Morgan

44. "The city of Jahilia is built entirely of sand, its structures formed of the desert whence it rises. It is a sight to wonder at: walled, four-gated, the whole of it a miracle worked by its citizens, who have learned the trick of transforming the fine white dune-sand of those forsaken parts, - the very stuff of inconstancy, - the quintessence of unsettlement, shifting, treachery, lack-of-form, - and have turned it, by alchemy, into the fabric of their newly invented permanence."
Author: Salman Rushdie

45. "'Fringe' was the first time I realized that I could ever man up in a character and make this transition from being a boy or a young man into actually being a man."
Author: Seth Gabel

46. "I take the subway to work. I love mass transportation."
Author: Shepard Smith

47. "Les coutures, les modes sont souvent apliquées à couper les corps féminin de a transcendance: la Chinoise aux pieds bandés peut à peine marcher, les griffes vernies de la star d'Hollywood la privent de ses mains, les hauts talons, les corsets, les paniers, les vertugadins, les crinolines étaient destinés moins à accentuer la combrure du corps féminin qu'à en augmenter l'impotence."
Author: Simone De Beauvoir

48. "Swathed in silk, I feel like a caterpillar in a cocoon awaiting metamorphosis. I always supposed that to be a peaceful condition. At first it is. But as I journey into the night, I feel more and more trapped, suffocated by the slippery bindings, unable to emerge until I have transformed into something of beauty. I squirm, trying to shed my ruined body and unlock the secret to growing flawless wings. Despite enormous effort, I remain a hideous creature, fired into my current form by the blast from the bombs."
Author: Suzanne Collins

49. "Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil."
Author: Tom Robbins

50. "The science of genetics is in a transition period, becoming an exact science just as the chemistry in the times of Lavoisier, who made the balance an indispensable implement in chemical research."
Author: Wilhelm Johannsen

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