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A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort. -- Sydney Smith
Obscure, like muddy waters. -- Laozi
Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail. -- Jean Cocteau
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity. -- William Wordsworth
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece. -- Vladimir Nabokov
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth. -- Maya Angelou
Obscure shadows on the mind are much scarier than the dark shadows of the night. -- Mehmet Murat ildan
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it. -- Blaise Pascal
I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God. -- Robert Browning
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! -- Bill Watterson
In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed. -- Edgar Allan Poe
Happy the life, that in a peaceful stream, Obscure, unnoticed through the vale has flow'd; The heart that ne'er was charm'd by fortune's gleam Is ever sweet contentment's blest abode. -- James Gates Percival
When I tour, it's like, well, like a food tour as much as a comedy tour. I try to eat at all the weird places, the obscure barbecue joints, burger places. There are a few spots in L.A. that I'm obsessed with - one of them is the Taco Zone taco truck on Alvarado. There are secret off-menu items that are amazing. -- Aziz Ansari
God and other artists are always a little obscure..... -- Oscar Wilde
Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place. -- Nicolaus Copernicus
Dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri. -- Parley P. Pratt
My God is rock'n'roll. It's an obscure power that can change your life. The most important part of my religion is to play guitar. -- Lou Reed
Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side. -- Miguel de Cervantes
What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings? -- Gustave Flaubert
I have seen ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended on a breath in the courts of England; I have witnessed a congress in solemn session to give laws to nations;...but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains at midnight, in a dungeon, in an obscure village of Missouri. -- Parley P. Pratt
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you! -- Charlotte Bronte
Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future...Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands. -- Susan Griffin
Be obscure clearly. -- E. B. White
I like what's obscure. -- Steven Klein
A Constitution should be short and obscure. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
In labouring to be concise, I become obscure. -- Horace
I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness. -- Billy Collins
The perfect war is started for obscure reasons, is hopelessly murderous, and accomplishes nothing. -- Errol Morris
I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure. -- Vikram Seth
More people are troubled by what is plain in Scripture than by what is obscure. -- Roy L. Smith
It is terribly important to appreciate that some things remain obscure to the bitter end. -- Anthony Stafford Beer
The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns. -- Madame de Stael
I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul. -- Therese of Lisieux
Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure; one must remember we are dealing with barbarians. -- Tacitus
For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged. -- Shirley Hazzard
The greatest danger in any argument is that real issues often clouded by superficial ones, that momentary passions may obscure permanent realities. -- Mary Ellen Chase
Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates. -- Georg C. Lichtenberg
One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them. -- Benjamin Carson
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 notion of the single man began in the 1950's. The idea of the bachelor as a separate life was new and obscure. -- Hugh Hefner
Crises have a way of thrusting into the limelight hitherto obscure persons, and giving them, for a long or short period, a leading role. -- Susan Ertz
Style is only the frame to hold your thoughts. It is like the sash of a window; if heavy, it will obscure the light. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I've never been good at self-promotion. And my URL is really obscure. And for years and years, there was nothing about me on my website. -- David Rees
It's quite an obscure notion for a kid, no? To want to be a curator. But even then, I knew that I would do this. -- Hans-Ulrich Obrist
Calamities that are not the result of purely natural phenomena usually have their origins, distant and obscure though they may be, in common human failings. -- Aung San Suu Kyi
With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing. -- Criss Jami
A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water. -- James Buchan
One can spend too much of one's life locked in stuffy rooms seeking out obscure truths, searching, researching, until one is too old to enjoy life. -- Jimmy Sangster
Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from. -- Renata Adler
Autumn clouds, vague and obscure; The evening, lonely and chill. I felt the dampness on my garments, But saw no spot, and heard no sound of rain. -- Bai Juyi
If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one, -- Arthur Conan Doyle
I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way -- Steve Wozniak
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Between knowledge of what really exists and ignorance of what does not exist lies the domain of opinion. It is more obscure than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance. -- Plato
The deepest life of nature is silent and obscure; so often the elements that move and mould society are the results of the sister's counsel and the mother's prayer. -- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
I have never been able to understand why perfectly sensible people waste time being wittily obscure instead of just saying what they want and going on about their business. -- Barry Hughart
And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. -- Thomas Jefferson
Speakers are not supposed to waste time on platitudes, but the capacity of this generation for ignoring the obvious and concentrating on the negative and the obscure is immense. -- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
When I started writing comics, 'comics writer' was the most obscure job in the world! If I wanted to be a celebrity, I would have become a moody English screen actor. -- Alan Moore
The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it. -- George Berkeley
Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them. -- Constantin Brancusi
For my birthday my husband learned to cook and is cooking one day a week for me. But he only likes to do fancy dishes. So we end up with weird, obscure things in the refrigerator. -- Cheryl Hines
Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.' -- Jon Landau
The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles. -- Ronald Fisher
The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people. -- Jacques Delors
I'm a little left of center, for sure, with Angels & Airwaves. But even when I get really weird, it's not that weird. It's not like some obscure Sonic Youth record or something. We don't take it quite that far. But what we do like are crescendos, and we do like when a song catches you off guard and it gives you the chills up and down your arms. -- Tom DeLonge
Facts can obscure the truth. -- Maya Angelou
Hardship makes the world obscure. -- Don DeLillo
Aiming at brevity, I become obscure. -- Horace
When the situation is obscure, attack -- Heinz Guderian
The future though imminent is obscure. -- Winston Churchill
The past is certain, the future obscure. -- Thales
Experts always tend to obscure the obvious. -- D. V. Ager
Things are more beautiful when they're obscure. -- Veda Hille
Sometimes people get passionate about the obscure jokes. -- Martin Short
In labouring to be concise, I become obscure -- Horace
I strive to be brief, and become obscure. -- Horace
In labouring to be brief, I become obscure. -- Horace
In trying to be concise I become obscure. -- Horace
Never be so brief as to become obscure. -- Tryon Edwards
A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years. -- Wendell Willkie
Dilemma of civilized man; body mobilized, but danger obscure. -- Philip K. Dick
I strive to be brief, and I become obscure. -- Baltasar Gracian
A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness. -- Horace
Long life will sometimes obscure the star of fame. -- Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne
Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious. -- Henri Frederic Amiel
I want to understand you, I study your obscure language. -- Alexander Pushkin
Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision. -- Joseph Joubert
When I struggle to be terse, I end by being obscure. -- Horace
As an artist, you're always somewhat obscure. We're not talking Hollywood. -- Christian Marclay
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious. -- Marguerite Gardiner
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious. -- Marguerite Gardiner
Mothers will be fishing kids out of obscure cubby-holes for years! -- Richard Hammond
We allow words to obscure the interpretation of the deeper meaning. -- Stephen Young
The function of a great library is to store obscure books. -- Nicholson Baker
Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure. -- Oscar Wilde
I'd rather hear an ugly truth, rather than an obscure lie. -- Ana Monnar
Ministers should be stars to give light, not clouds to obscure. -- Charles Spurgeon
The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius. -- Jennifer Donnelly
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. -- Edward R. Murrow
Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is. -- Matthew Arnold
I still buy CDs and DVDs, but generally for more obscure material. -- Julian Ovenden
I am never needlessly obscure I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure. -- Donald Barthelme
Bull markets and Bear markets can obscure mathematical laws, they cannot repeal them. -- Warren Buffett
Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. -- Desiderius Erasmus
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth. -- Maya Angelou
There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper. -- Arthur Machen
Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand. -- E. B. White
As night the life-inclining stars best shows, So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose. -- George Chapman
In laboring to be concise, I become obscure. [Lat., Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.] -- Horace
Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines. -- David Ogilvy
The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive -- Stefan Molyneux
A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure. -- Hugh Kingsmill
Rock roll is not obscure, it's really easy to understand. So is my painting. -- Grace Slick
In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. -- Aldous Huxley
To love it too much is to obscure and not see what is there. -- Dennis Potter
To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure. -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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