Quotes and Sayings about Absence
"Life has become the ideology of its own absence."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Life, Absence, Ideology)
"This is a big deal. My wife and I sat in our home and we watched those young men get slaughtered on the streets of Mogadishu in the absence of a plan. It broke our heart."
- Dick Armey
(Related: Home, Men, Wife, Heart, Absence)
"It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present."
- Antonin Artaud
(Related: Time, Work, Absence, Opium, Order, Present)
"Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but it sure heats up the blood."
- Elizabeth Ashley
(Related: Heart, Absence, Blood)
"Every one knows, that the mind will not be kept from contemplating what it loves in the midst of crowds and business. Hence come those frequent absences, so observable in conversation; for whilst the body is confined to present company, the mind is flown to that which it delights in."
- Mary Astell
(Related: Business, Body, Company, Conversation, Crowds, Mind, Present, Will)
"With her high pale brow under her faded brown hair, she was like a rock washed clean by years of her husband's absences at conventions, dinners, committee meetings or simply at the office."
- Louis Auchincloss
(Related: HusbCommittee, Hair, Meetings, Office, Years)
"In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?"
- Saint Augustine
(Related: Absence, Justice)
"Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type."
- Irving Babbitt
(Related: Men, Society, Discipline, Absence, Military)
"In the absence of that, I am happy to play solo, but I don't think there is any comparison."
- Derek Bailey
(Related: Absence, Play)
"There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence."
- Philip James Bailey
(Related: Absence, Excellence)
"Not longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man."
- Hans Urs von Balthasar
(Related: Beauty, Religion, Absence, Man)
"The surest test of discipline is its absence."
- Clara Barton
(Related: Discipline, Absence)
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
- Thomas Haynes Bayly
(Related: Heart, Absence)
"When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."
- Brendan Behan
(Related: Death, Absence)
"I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."
- Brendan Behan
(Related: Death, Absence, Court)
"Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: People, Absence, Friends)
"The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends."
- Elizabeth Bowen
(Related: People, Heart, Absence, Friends, May, Senses)
"The question we all face is what sort of culture we will live in for the rest of our lives and then hand on to the next generation - one that embraces these most basic of values, or one that collapses because of their absence."
- Tammy Bruce
(Related: Values, Absence, Culture, Question, Rest, Will)
"Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates."
- Jean de la Bruyere
(Related: Happiness, Life, Absence, Grief)
"With the absence of a flu vaccination last year, I did not take a flu shot; but there is still some immunity that carries over from year to year; but about every 30 years, there is a major change in the genetics of the flu virus."
- Michael Burgess
(Related: Change, Absence, Genetics, Years)
"There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Thought, Absence, Nothing)
"Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler."
- George Byron
(Related: Daughters, Husbands, Wives)
"Absence - that common cure of love."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Love, Absence, Cure)
"In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway."
- Tucker Carlson
(Related: Absence, Superstition, Theory)
"But I still always felt the absence of a mother."
- Marcel Carne
(Related: Mother, Absence)
"Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening."
- Willa Cather
(Related: Absence, Country)
"Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches."
- Miguel de Cervantes
(Related: Love, Absence)
"White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: God, Absence)
"Happiness is the absence of suffering. I think it's an interesting way of looking at it. I think the absence of suffering exists very rarely in the world we live in."
- Julie Christie
(Related: Happiness, Absence, Suffering, World)
"In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress."
- Leonard Cohen
(Related: Dreams, Truth, Absence)
"Total absence of humor renders life impossible."
- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
(Related: Humor, Life, Absence)
"In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness."
- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
(Related: Absence, Ugliness)
"I called their attention also to the absence of all means of ventilating the hall, remarking that, as we had already breathed the air which it contained for a full hour, it must have lost much of its vital properties and needed to be renewed."
- George Combe
(Related: Absence, Attention)
"I would much prefer to be a judge than a coal miner because of the absence of falling coal."
- Peter Cook
(Related: Absence)
"So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational."
- Charles Horton Cooley
(Related: Discipline, Absence, Freedom)
"My dear, the duty that devolved wholly on you in my absence of guiding and expanding the minds of our dear children is a laborious one and a responsible one."
- Ezra Cornell
(Related: Absence, Children, Duty)
"Sport is part of every man and woman's heritage and its absence can never be compensated for."
- Pierre de Coubertin
(Related: Absence, Man, Woman)
"Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair."
- William Cowper
(Related: Love, Death, Hope, Absence, Despair)
"Absence of occupation is not rest; A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
- William Cowper
(Related: Absence, Mind, Occupation, Rest)
"Absence of proof is not proof of absence."
- William Cowper
(Related: Absence, Proof)
"In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless."
- Aleister Crowley
(Related: Willpower, Absence)
"And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope-nothing else."
- Patti Davis
(Related: Hope, Absence)
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!"
- Edsger Dijkstra
(Related: Bugs, Testing)
"Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others."
- Wayne Dyer
(Related: Absence, Judgment, Magic, Relationships)
"The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw."
- Henry Ellis
(Related: Beauty, Absence)
"That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter."
- Edward Everett
(Related: Absence, Battle, Doubt)
"Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity."
- Jean Henri Fabre
(Related: Absence, Appearance, Feeling, Ignorance, Learning, Merit, Sincerity)
"I wish you to inform the Court that my absence, though deliberate, is not intended in any way to be disrespectful. Nor is it prompted by any fear of the punishment which might be inflicted on me."
- Bram Fischer
(Related: Fear, Absence, Court, Punishment)
"Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it."
- Thomas Fuller
(Related: Love, Absence)
"Yes, the meeting of dear friends atones for the regret of separation; and like it so much enhances affection, that after absence one wonders how one has been able to stay away from them so long."
- Marguerite Gardiner
(Related: Absence, Affection, Friends, Meeting, Regret, Separation, Wonders)
"In France, a woman may forget that she is neither young nor handsome; for the absence of these claims to attention does not expose her to be neglected by the male sex."
- Marguerite Gardiner
(Related: Sex, Absence, Attention, Forget, France, May, Woman)
"Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made."
- Jose Ortega Y Gasset
(Related: Absence)
"Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence."
- Edmond de Goncourt
(Related: Love, Absence, First, Today)
"It is a sign of the times that the absence of meaningful ID requirements in many states leaves our voting process vulnerable to fraud and allows legal votes to be cancelled out by illegally cast ballots."
- Virgil Goode
(Related: Legal, Absence, Fraud, states, Voting)
"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value."
- Alan Greenspan
(Related: Absence, Gold, Inflation, Value)
"In 1916 I was discharged from military service, or rather, given a sort of leave of absence on the understanding that I might be recalled within a few months. And so I was a free man, at least for a while."
- George Grosz
(Related: Absence, Man, Military, Months, Service, Understanding)
"I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Death, Absence, Court)
"We want to see Israel withdraw from our territory. But we don't want to be accountable vis-a-vis Israel on the security basis, because we don't see, in the absence of a peace agreement, that Lebanon can really be accountable to Israel if anything happens."
- Rafik Hariri
(Related: Peace, Absence, Agreement, Israel, Security, Want)
"Belief in the absence of illusions is itself an illusion."
- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
(Related: Belief, Absence, Illusion)
"The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Experience, Absence, Absurdity, Meaning, Words)
"Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity."
- William Hazlitt
(Related: Absence, Difficulty, Grace, Hesitation, Pain)
"I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought."
- Alexander Herzen
(Related: Thought, Absence, Feeling, Information, Man, Passion)
"The absence and suppression of justice can only open the way for extremists to exploit such a condition to perpetrate acts of violence against innocents."
- King Hussein I
(Related: Absence, Justice, Open, Violence)
"Love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. Its natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement."
- Gerald Jampolsky
(Related: Love, Fear, Absence, Questions, State)
"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Friendship, Love, Absence, May)
"If Bill Finger created Batman, where is Bill Finger's byline on my strip? It is conspicuous by its absence."
- Bob Kane
(Related: Absence)
"In the 5 years, well over 60,000 American families have been broken apart by the absence of insurance because the only way for parents to get treatment for their children is to turn the custody of those children over to the State."
- Patrick J. Kennedy
(Related: Absence, American, Children, Parents, State, Treatment, Years)
"There can be little doubt that absence from work, and inefficient work, are frequently due to intemperance."
- William Lyon Mackenzie King
(Related: Work, Absence, Doubt, Intemperance)
"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Absence, Mind)
"Peace must be more than the absence of war."
- Helmut Kohl
(Related: Peace, War, Absence)
"Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement."
- Alice Koller
(Related: Achievement, Absence, Being, Choice, Solitude)
"While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap."
- Ray Kroc
(Related: Success, Absence)
"For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence."
- Jacques Lacan
(Related: Nature, Absence, Being, Symbol, Uniqueness)
"I'd excluded New York from my writing, and then I came back and I fell in love with it all over again. The energy comes from an absence, that yearning for New York when you are not there."
- Jonathan Lethem
(Related: Love, Absence, Energy, Writing, Yearning)
"The weather was fine and moderate. The hunters all returned, having killed during their absence three elk, four deer, two porcupines, a fox and a hare."
- Meriwether Lewis
(Related: Absence, Weather)
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
- Nelson Mandela
(Related: Fear, Courage, Absence, Man)
"In the absence of any short term in common use to represent all desirable things, or things that satisfy human wants, we may use the term Goods for that purpose."
- Alfred Marshall
(Related: Purpose, Absence, May)
"The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."
- Karl Marx
(Related: Peace, Absence, Meaning, Opposition, Socialism)
"Discouragement is not the absence of adequacy but the absence of courage."
- Neal A. Maxwell
(Related: Courage, Absence, Discouragement)
"Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair."
- Rollo May
(Related: Courage, Absence, Despair)
"Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Happiness, Absence, Actions, Pain, Pleasure, Right, Wrong)
"The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity."
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Related: Love, Absence, Trials)
"The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility."
- Arthur Miller
(Related: Absence, Answers, Humility, Job, Questions)
"Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?"
- Arthur Miller
(Related: Action, Absence, Choice, Paradise, Innocence)
"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people."
- Jawaharlal Nehru
(Related: Peace, War, Soul, People, Absence, Mind, Nations, Serenity, State)
"For many Americans, including many who are employed, going to the doctor when they fall ill or become injured may not be an option because of the absence of health insurance."
- Ben Nelson
(Related: Health, Absence, Americans, May)
"You'll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea."
- Earl Nightingale
(Related: Idea, Absence, Boredom)
"The human father has to be confronted and recognized as human, as man who created a child and then, by his absence, left the child fatherless and then Godless."
- Anais Nin
(Related: Father, Absence, Man)
"In the absence of sound oversight,responsible businesses are forced to compete against unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restrictions on activities that might harm the environment, or take advantage of middle-class families, or threaten to bring down the entire financial system."
- Barack Obama
(Related: Financial, Absence, Environment, Harm, Sound)
"Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer."
- Ovid
(Related: Men, Friend, Absence)
"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum."
- Thomas Paine
(Related: Absence, Religious, World)
"Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life."
- Jean Paul
(Related: Life, Absence, May, Will, Words)
"There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Absence, America, Court, states, United, World)
"Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression."
- John Charles Polanyi
(Related: Science, Technology, Absence, Rights, Human rights, Oppression, Respect)
"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."
- Roger de Rabutin
(Related: Love, Absence, Fire, Wind)
"In general, if signs of sectarianism do appear in a Socialist Party, these are only the products of the absence of a broad Labour movement in the country."
- Karl Radek
(Related: Absence, Country, Party)
"Wilderness is not defined by the absence of certain activities, but rather by the presence of certain unique and invaluable characteristics."
- Nick Rahall
(Related: Absence, Wilderness)
"To me, its seems necessary to rediscover - and the energy to do so exists - that even the political and economic spheres need moral responsibility, a responsibility that is born in man's heart and, in the end, has to do with the presence or absence of God."
- Joseph Ratzinger
(Related: God, Heart, Absence, End, Energy, Man, Responsibility)
"Judicious absence is a weapon."
- Charles Reade
(Related: Absence)
"Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means."
- Ronald Reagan
(Related: Peace, Ability, Absence, Conflict)
"A month after the scandal broke, I tried to go back to work at the pharmaceutical company after a leave of absence. But because of all the publicity and resulting pressure and stress, I finally resigned."
- Donna Rice
(Related: Work, Absence, Company, Pressure, Publicity, Scandal, Stress)
"I just want to make a point that it's not just great teachers that sometimes shape your life. Sometimes it's the absence of great teachers that shapes your life and being ignored can be just as good for a person as being lauded."
- Julia Roberts
(Related: Life, Absence, Being, Teachers, Want)
"The system adopted in the Latin American instrument proves that, although no state can obligate another to join such a zone, neither can one prevent others wishing to do so from adhering to a regime of total absence of nuclear weapons within their own territories."
- Alfonso G. Robles
(Related: Absence, American, State, Weapons, Wishing, Zone)
"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Absence, Fans, Wind)
"Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering."
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: Death, Absence, Suffering)
"Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind."
- Leo Rosten
(Related: Heart, Absence, Mind, Sight)
"I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important."
- Salman Rushdie
(Related: Time, God, Absence, Now)
"Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence."
- Salman Rushdie
(Related: Life, Absence)
"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Belief, Absence, Man, Will)
"Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Absence, Freedom, May, Obstacles)
"One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name."
- George Saintsbury
(Related: History, Absence, Facts, Fiction, Literary, Literature, Name, Prose)
"The situation in the region is flammable and may explode at any moment, because of the crucial events and because of the absence of justice in executing the international legitimacy resolutions, regarding the Israeli Arab cause and the oppression on Palestinians by Israelis."
- Ali A. Saleh
(Related: Absence, Cause, Events, Justice, May, Oppression)
"To observe people in conflict is a necessary part of a child's education. It helps him to understand and accept his own occasional hostilities and to realize that differing opinions need not imply an absence of love."
- Milton R. Sapirstein
(Related: Love, Education, People, Absence, Conflict, Opinions)
"God is absence. God is the solitude of man."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: God, Absence, Man, Solitude)
"It would be hard to ignore the absence of democracy in any Arab nation."
- Jack Schwartz
(Related: Absence, Democracy, Nation)
"We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind."
- John Robert Seeley
(Related: Absence, Mind, World)
"It is the maintenance of slavery by law in a state, not parallels of latitude, that makes its a southern state; and the absence of this, that makes it a northern state."
- William H. Seward
(Related: Absence, Law, Slavery, State)
"Absence from those we love is self from self - a deadly banishment."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Love, Absence, Self)
"I dote on his very absence."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Absence)
"Tact is one of the first mental virtues, the absence of it is fatal to the best talent."
- William Gilmore Simms
(Related: Talent, Absence, First, Tact)
"The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Absence, Criticism, Freedom)
"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
- Baruch Spinoza
(Related: Peace, War, Virtue, Absence, Benevolence, Confidence, Justice, Mind, State)
"Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character."
- Baruch Spinoza
(Related: Peace, War, Character, Strength, Virtue, Absence)
"For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
- Baruch Spinoza
(Related: Peace, War, Virtue, Absence, Benevolence, Confidence, Justice, Mind, State)
"Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other."
- Freya Stark
(Related: Art, Family, Life, Absence)
"Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
(Related: Love, Influence)
"The absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these people the agile walk of the wild animal, while the general simplicity of their lives has given them many other points of physical perfection."
- John Millington Synge
(Related: People, Absence, Europe, Perfection, Simplicity)
"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
(Related: Happiness, Life, Absence, Man)
"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict - alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."
- Dorothy Thompson
(Related: Peace, Absence, Conflict, Violence)
"The alarming thing in China is the almost total absence of primary care. Even in cities, there are no independent doctors' offices or neighborhood clinics, so people have to go to the hospital for every health care need."
- Nancy Travis
(Related: Health, People, Absence, Care, Cities, Doctors)
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Fear, Courage, Absence)
"Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or not."
- Edward Burnett Tylor
(Related: People, Absence, Children, Statistics)
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Art, Absence, Enemy, Limitations)
"The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature."
- Alfred North Whitehead
(Related: Humor, Bible, Absence, Literature)
"In the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for."
- Elijah Wood
(Related: Love, Absence, Fighting, Nothing, Worth)
"A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence."
- Francis Wright
(Related: Ideas, Belief, Absence, Merit, Religious)
"In the absence of a magnetic field the period of all these oscillations is the same. But as soon as the electron is exposed to the effect of a magnetic field, its motion changes."
- Pieter Zeeman
(Related: Absence, Effect)
"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."
- Zhuangzi
(Related: Happiness, Absence)