Quotes about obscurity

Obscurity brings safety.

— Aesop

The street to obscurity is paved with athletes who can perform great feats before friendly crowds.

— George Allen

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

— William Blake

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

— George Eliot

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

— Thomas Hardy

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

— Eric Hoffer

Obscurantism is the academic theorist's revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity -- a way of proclaiming one's superiority in the face of one's diminished influence.

— David Lehman

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.

— Marshall Mcluhan

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

— Henry Miller

The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

— Adrienne Rich

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

— Lionel Trilling

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.

— Mark Twain

Obscurity is the realm of error.

— Marquis De Vauvenargues

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

— Mae West