Obdurate Quotes

The past is obdurate.

I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!

A thousand times, people may have touched each other, but never ever sensed a single vein of oneness or complicity in the wilderness of their inner world, since obdurate mental impediments have been barricading the road to understanding and propinquity. (“A thousand times”)

He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.

Now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witnessed huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: At once as far as angels ken he views The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulfur unconsumed.

Consider how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down in the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm-chair and confuse his "Rinse the mouth-rinse the mouth" with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us - when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature

He who travels far will often see things Far removed from what he believed was Truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, He is often accused of lying, For the obdurate people will not believe What they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe, Will give little credence to my song.

He who travels far will often see things far removed from what he believed was truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, he is often accused of lying for the obdurate people will not believe what they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe, will give little credence to my song." (author unknown)

In discourse more sweet (For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate- Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!- Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm Pain for a while or anguish, and excite Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdurate breast With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

A heart of stone doesn't know any better.

I worry about Lily, sluggish as she is. Will she see Carter's truths? Will he tell her? God knows she won't hear them. She's moving too fast to hear anyone's music but her own. She's so set, but I know he could make her settled. I tried to sync their noise into music, but they both pushed back. Too obdurate to be oblong. Silly Lily. How can she resist someone who brings gum and sounds like math?

I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul, - and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

But his doom 54: Reserv’d him to more wrath; for now the thought 55: Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 56: Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes 57: That witness’d huge affliction and dismay 58: Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:

I couldn't believe his arrogance. I turned away hoping to ignore him enough so he'd just leave. "Just give me five minutes," came Flynn's muffled voice through the closed window. I ignored him. He'd caused me way too much trouble. "Mercy, just crack the window so we can talk." I did and immediately said, "You are a solipsistic obdurate asshole." Then I rolled the window back up to continue to ignore him. "What the hell? You and these words," he muttered loud enough they came clearly through the closed window.

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it is strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.” from her essay, On Being Ill

Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming--Diana and Helen--and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.' Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance... 'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.' But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave.

Because the past isn’t just obdurate; it’s in harmony with both itself and the future.

The past is obdurate. ― Stephen King, 11/22/63

Because the past isn’t just obdurate; it’s in harmony with both itself and the future. I experienced that harmony time and again.

Now I am a woman of bone and skin, the patches of pigmentation like a map of a rocky archipelago; I am obdurate and uncooperative, drifting on a sea of memory between islands of lucidity.

Evil is the soul’s choice of the not-God. The corollary is that damnation, or hell, is the permanent choice of the not-God. God does not (in the monstrous old-fashioned phrase) “send” anybody to hell; hell is that state of the soul in which its choice becomes obdurate and fixed; the punishment (so to call it) of that soul is to remain eternally in the state that it has chosen.

Words can be tiresome as a swarm of insects. They can prick and buzz! Words can be no more than a series of farts; or on the other hand they can be adamantine, obdurate, inviolable, stone upon stone.

How the moon triumphs through the endless nights! How the stars throb and glitter as they wheel Their thick processions of supernal lights Around the blue vault obdurate as steel! And men regard with passionate awe and yearning The mighty marching and the golden burning, And think the heavens respond to what they feel. Boats gliding like dark shadows of a dream Are glorified from vision as they pass The quivering moonbridge on the deep black stream; Cold windows kindle their dead glooms of glass To restless crystals; cornice dome and column Emerge from chaos in the splendour solemn; Like faery lakes gleam lawns of dewy grass. With such a living light these dead eyes shine, These eyes of sightless heaven, that as we gaze We read a pity, tremulous, divine, Or cold majestic scorn in their pure rays: Fond man! they are not haughty, are not tender; There is no heart or mind in all their splendour, They thread mere puppets all their marvellous maze.

Born deceitful, obdurate, imperious, barbaric, selfish, as extravagant in his pleasures as he was miserly when it came to doing any good, a liar, a glutton, a drunkard, a coward, given to sodomy, incest, murder, arson and theft – not a single virtue compensated for all these vices.

We tend to imagine stone as inert matter, obdurate in its fixity. But here in the rift it feels instead like a liquid briefly paused in its flow. Seen in deep time, stone folds as strata, gouts as lava, floats as plates, shifts as shingle. Over aeons, rock absorbs, transforms, levitates from seabed to summit.

AN EXQUISITELY SHARPENED HATRED FOR the white man is of course an emotion not difficult for Negroes to harbor. Yet if truth be known, this hatred does not abound in every Negro’s soul; it relies upon too many mysterious and hidden patterns of life and chance to flourish luxuriantly everywhere. Real hatred of the sort of which I speak—hatred so pure and obdurate that no sympathy, no human warmth, no flicker of compassion can make the faintest nick or scratch upon the stony surface of its being—is not common to all Negroes.

The Navajos were another matter. Theirs was a sprawling nation, wealthy in stock, obdurate in its ways, open to change but only on its terms.

obdurate

What ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness.

obdurate.

The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it.

He gave her his hand, sensing the thin strong rod of obdurate competence that was the armature of her artsy Village style.

obdurately

Part of the magic was that Hitler told people what they wanted to hear. His pronouncements were not a challenge but a confirmation of his followers’ assumptions and preconceptions, an incitement to cast off the dreary restrictions of civility and rationality and allow their emotions full Dionysiac release, above all a permission both to maintain hope in the face of obdurate reality and to hate anyone or anything that was perceived to undermine that hope. Catholics, Socialists, and Communists, with intellectual structures of their own, were not as susceptible to him. He appealed to a devastated populace that, like him, had lost everything, including their established beliefs, felt a profound sense of grievance, and found consolation in a pan-Germanism that was part sentimentality and part utopianism, a sort of forward-looking nostalgia. The content of the speeches was important to that degree.

A phrase such as ‘the idea derived from evolution that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis’ for example, not impossibly intricate in itself but somehow resistant to effort, as though it triggered something obdurate and even delinquent in his mind. Or the promise to look at an argument from three points of view, each of which had five salient features, the first of which had four distinguishable aspects. It was like discovering that a supposedly sane person with whom one had been enjoying a perfect normal conversation was in fact quite mad. Or, if not mad, sadistic.

Badgers is big people an' strong as ponies too. An' obdurate! Son, a badger is that decided an' set in his way that sech feather-blown things as hills is excitable an' vacillatin' by comparison.

I think that I need to learn a few different modalities of change: gradual and grounded like a seed growing and, too, when it is time to leap lest I be left hanging over a chasm clutching frantically to either side. In other words, I may need to listen to guidance about when to edge forward and when to leap forward. What clearly does not serve me is trying to meet every situation with an obdurate set mode.

The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my fiesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...

Just think what the ordeal must be like for less intellectually robust people, less equipped by education and rhetorical skill than they are, or than Julia Sweeney is, to argue their corner in the face of obdurate family members.

I treasure ruefully some memories of W.H. Auden that go back to the middle 1960s, when he arrived in New Haven to give a reading of his poems at Ezra Stiles College. We had met several times before, in New York City and at Yale, but were only acquaintances. The earlier Auden retains my interest, but much of the frequently devotional poetry does not find me. Since our mutual friend John Hollander was abroad, Auden phoned to ask if he might stay with my wife and me, remarking of his dislike of college guest suites. The poet arrived in a frayed, buttonless overcoat, which my wife insisted on mending. His luggage was an attache case containing a large bottle of gin, a small one of vermouth, a plastic drinking cup, and a sheaf of poems. After being supplied with ice, he requested that I remind him of the amount of his reading fee. A thousand dollars had been the agreed sum, a respectable honorarium more than forty years ago. He shook his head and said that as a prima donna he could not perform, despite the prior arrangement. Charmed by this, I phoned the college master - a good friend - who cursed heartily but doubled the sum when I assured him that the poet was as obdurate as Lady Bracknell in 'The Importance of Being Earnest'. Informed of this yielding, Auden smiled sweetly and was benign and brilliant at dinner, then at the reading, and as he went to bed after we got home.

YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth, How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex To triumph, like an Amazonian trull, Upon their woes whom fortune captivates! But that thy face is, vizard-like, unchanging, Made impudent with use of evil deeds, I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush. To tell thee whence thou cam'st, of whom deriv'd, Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless. Thy father bears the type of King of Naples, Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem, Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman. Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen; Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars mounted run their horse to death. 'T is beauty that doth oft make women proud; But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small. 'T is virtue that doth make them most admir'd; The contrary doth make thee wond'red at. 'T is government that makes them seem divine; The want thereof makes thee abominable. Thou art as opposite to every good As the Antipodes are unto us, Or as the south to the Septentrion. O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child, To bid the father wipe his eyes withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. Bid'st thou me rage? why, now thou hast thy wish: Wouldst have me weep? why, now thou hast thy will; For raging wind blows up incessant showers, And when the rage allays the rain begins. These tears are my sweet Rutland's obsequies, And every drop cries vengeance for his death, 'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

Storytelling entails weaving a narrative out of the disturbing, strange, inspirational, and unremarkable detritus of life. By picking among the litter of our personal experiences to select evocative anecdotes to weave into a narrative format, we reveal which of life’s legendary offerings prove the most sublime to us. Acts of omission are momentous. Our narration of personal sketches divulge what factoids inspire us or do not stir us into action, or contain obdurate truths that prove virtually impossible to crack.

It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them.' More than a little rich when coming from the tormentor in chief, but hard to dispute.

Milwaukee, Rebecca. Order and sobriety and a devotion to cleanliness that scours out the soul. Decent people doing their best to live decent lives, three's nothing really to hate them for, they do their jobs and maintain their property and love their children (most of the time); they take family vacations and visit relatives and decorate their houses for the holidays, collect some things and save up for other things; they're good people (most of them, most of the time), but if you were me, if you were young Pete Harris, you felt the modesty of it eroding you, depopulating you, all those little satisfactions and no big, dangerous ones; no heroism, no genius, no terrible yearning for anything you can't at least in theory actually have. If you were young lank-haired, pustule-plagued Pete Harris you felt like you were always about to expire from the safety of your life, its obdurate sensibleness, that Protestant love of the unexceptional; the eternal certainty of the faithful that flamboyance and the macabre are not just threatening but - worse - uninteresting.

The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...

Life is so unfair. Why would children be born to parents who use and abuse them while those who cherish and ‘garnish’ them remain ‘empty’? Why would the obdurate and cantankerous abound in wealth while the affectionate and generous pauperize? Why would the beautiful and dutiful lack suitors while the bland and unplanned are plenteously patronized? Why would everyday be for the thief’ and not for the chief? Why, why and why?

When there is no novelty in your world, you become used to taking a long time to do one thing. Reading and rereading and rereading. But also: spending time with things which do nothing, which give you nothing. There is something which emerges in the space between you and the obdurate object. There is something which happens when you attention is not attracted, steered, managed; when you open yourself to something already fully exposed, with nothing more to know.

It all came true, didn't it? ' said Woland, staring at the eyes of the head. ' Your head was cut off by a woman, the meeting didn't take place and I am living in your flat. That is a fact. And a fact is the most obdurate thing in the world. But what interests us now is the future, not the facts of the past. You have always been a fervent proponent of the theory that when a man's head is cut off his life stops, he turns to dust and he ceases to exist. I am glad to be able to tell you in front of all my guests-- despite the fact that their presence here is proof to the contrary --that your theory is intelligent and sound. Now--one theory deserves another. Among them there is one which maintains that a man will receive his deserts in accordance with his beliefs. So be it! You shall depart into the void and from the goblet into which your skull is about to be transformed I shall have the pleasure of drinking to life eternal!

That is what the orthodox Catholic doctrine is. I do not want to argue it here because that would lead us away from our subject; but I want to make clear what it is. Evil is the soul’s choice of the not-God. The corollary is that damnation, or hell, is the permanent choice of the not-God. God does not (in the monstrous old-fashioned phrase) “send” anybody to hell; hell is that state of the soul in which its choice becomes obdurate and fixed; the punishment (so to call it) of that soul is to remain eternally in the state that it has chosen.

Oh what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming-Diana and Helen-and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.

Beyond these hills, the crests of which offer one hermitages in all of which one would like to dwell, the astonished eye perceives the peaks of the Alps, always covered in snow, and their stern austerity recalls to one so much of the sorrows of life as is necessary to enhance one's immediate pleasure. The imagination is touched by the distant sound of the bell of some little village hidden among the trees: these sounds, borne across the waters which soften their tone, assume a tinge of gentle melancholy and resignation, and seem to be saying to man: 'Life is fleeting: do not therefore show yourself so obdurate towards the happiness that is offered you, make haste to enjoy it.

Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eyes in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming -- Diana and Helen -- and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea." - story "Goodbye, My Brother

For example, he looks at 21 different hunter-gatherer societies for which we have solid historical evidence, from the Walbiri of Australia to the Tauade of New Guinea to the Ammassalik of Greenland to the Ona of Tierra Del Fuego and found that the average number of people in their villages was 148.4. The same pattern holds true for military organization. "Over the years military planners have arrived at a rule of thumb which dictates that functional fighting units cannot be substantially larger than 200 men." Dunbar writes. "This, I suspect, is not simply a matter of how the generals in the rear exercise control and coordination, because companies have remained obdurately stuck at this size despite all the advances in communications technology since the first world war. Rather, it is as thought the planners have discovered, by trial and error over the centuries, that it is hard to get more than this number of men sufficiently familiar with each other so that they can work together as a functional unit." It is still possible, ofcourse, to run an army with larger groups. But at a bigger size you have to impose complicated hierarchies and rules and regulations and formal measures to try to command loyalty and cohesion. But below 150, Dunbar argues, it is possible to achieve these same goals informally: "At this size, orders can be implemented and unruly behavior controlled on the basis of personal loyalties and direct man-to-man contacts. With larger groups this becomes impossible.

In tortures of dire coldness now a Lake of waters deep Sweeps over thee freezing to solid still thou sitst closd up In that transparent rock as if in joy of thy bright prison Till overburdend with its own weight drawn out thro immensity With a crash breaking across the horrible mass comes down Thundring & hail & frozen iron haild from the Element Rends thy white hair yet thou dost fixd obdurate brooding sit Writing thy books. Anon a cloud filld with a waste of snows Covers thee still obdurate still resolvd & writing still Tho rocks roll oer thee tho floods pour tho winds black as the Sea Cut thee in gashes tho the blood pours down around thy ankles Freezing thy feet to the hard rock still thy pen obdurate Traces the wonders of Futurity in horrible fear of the future

It all came true, didn't it?' said Woland, staring at the eyes of the head. 'Your head was cut off by a woman, the meeting didn't take place and I am living in your flat. That is a fact. And a fact is the most obdurate thing in the world. But what interests us now is the future, not the facts of the past. You have always been a fervent proponent of the theory that when a man's head is cut off his life stops, he turns to dust and he ceases to exist. I am glad to be able to tell you in front of all my guests - despite the fact that their presence here is proof to the contrary - that your theory is intelligent and sound. Now - one theory deserves another. Among them there is one which maintains that a man will receive his deserts in accordance with his beliefs. So be it! You shall depart into the void and from the goblet into which your skull is about to be transformed I shall have the pleasure of drinking to life eternal!

We tend to imagine stone as inert matter, obdurate in its fixity. But here in the rift it feels instead like a liquid briefly paused in its flow. Seen in deep time, stone folds as strata, gouts as lava, floats as plates, shifts as shingle. Over aeons, rock absorbs, transforms, levitates from seabed to summit. Down here, too, the boundaries between life and not-life are less clear. I think of the discovery of the bones in Aveline’s, shining with calcite, lying promiscuously, almost converted into stone . . . I slip out the whalebone owl, feel the Braille of its back, the arcs of its wings, thinking of how it had taken flight from a whale’s beached ribs. We are part mineral beings too – our teeth are reefs, our bones are stones – and there is a geology of the body as well as of the land. It is mineralization – the ability to convert calcium into bone – that allows us to walk upright, to be vertebrate, to fashion the skulls that shield our brains.

It would seem as if progress would benefit the underprivileged above all others, but in reality it is oftener the case that the townspeople are more disposed to consent to radical change; their frenetic environment fosters a sort of flightiness that must be appeased by resorting to anything which resembles a novelty. All of this is a requisite for large towns, for the intricate connection of enterprises, occupations and maintenances requires all citizens to have a tractable disposition, lest everything collapse by the idleness of the obdurate mind. Peasants, however, live by the old ways. Nay, even if they be destitute or famished, they shall nevertheless not fail to adhere to those values which they and their antecedents have always esteemed, because that is how they have always lived, and shall always live. Their environment is serene, and they need not follow novelty to maintain their livelihoods. If one imprisons an animal for a protracted period of time, it shall eventually forgo the taste of freedom. And so these former slaves – for that is essentially what they were four years ago – have become dependent on the fetters, and cannot continue to endure without complete subservience.

The black hole of the galaxy swallows the boiling energy of human fury. Soon my waning fume will be obscured forevermore, all insignia of my ionized essence tucked into the anonymous pleat of the universe’s billowing skirt. Until the coarse earth’s rank mustiness calls for me, can I take comfort living purposefully in the rhythms of an ordinarily life? Can I unabashedly absorb the scintillating jewels in the daily milieu? Can I savor an array of pleasantries with my tongue, ears, nose, eyes, lips, and fingertips? Can I take solace in the tenderness of the nights by singing out songs of love and heartache? Can I devote the dazzle of daylight and the vastness of the night’s starriness to investigate life, make a concerted effort to reduce imbedded ignorance, and penetrate layers of obdurate obliviousness? Can I conduct a rigorous search for wisdom irrespective of wherever this journey takes me? Can I make use of the burly pack of prior personal experiences to increase self-awareness? Can I aspire to go forward in good spirits and cheerfully accept all challenges as they come? Can I skim along the delicate surface of life with a light heart until greeting an endless sleep with a begrudging grin in the coolness of the ebbing light?

Hero might have enjoyed the evening spent at Almack's Assembly Rooms, but it had not been one of unmixed pleasure for her escort, while for one other person it had been an evening of almost unleavened annoyance. Miss Milborne, seeing the most ardent of her admirers enter the rooms with Hero on his arm, had suffered something in the nature of a shock. Never before had she seen George in attendance on any other lady than herself! When he came to Almack's it was to form one of her court; and when she did not dance with him he had a gratifying habit of leaning against the wall and watching her, instead of soliciting some other damsel to dance with him. Now, on the heels of the most obdurate quarrel they had had, here he was, looking perfectly cheerful, actually laughing at something Hero had said to him, his handsome head bent a little to catch her words. Hero, too, was in very good looks: in fact, Miss Milborne had not known that her little friend could appear to such advantage. She could never, of course, aspire to such beauty as belonged to the Incomparable, but Miss Milborne was no fool, and she was obliged to own that there was something particularly taking in the bride's smile and mischievous twinkle. Watching George, she came to the reluctant conclusion that he was fully sensible of his partner's charm. He had given his adored Isabella nothing more than a common bow upon catching sight of her, and it was plain that he meant to devote his evening to Hero. Miss Milborne could think of a dozen reasons to account for his gallanting Hero to the ball, but none of them satisfied her; nor could the distinguishing attention paid to her by her ducal admirer quite restore her spirits.

The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:— "I am going away to the Great House Farm! O, yea! O, yea! O!" This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

and the gallows had only made the Blackfish more obdurate,

But film sometimes flinches at the expertise of actresses, and the sympathetic viewer may come to realize that there was a mute honesty in Novak: she did not conceal the fact that she had been drawn into a world capable of exploiting her. Filming seemed an ordeal for her; it was as if the camera hurt her. But while many hostile to the movies rose in defense of the devastation of Marilyn Monroe—whether or not she was a sentient victim—Novak was stoical, obdurate, or sullen. She allowed very few barriers between that raw self and the audience and now looks dignified, reflective, and responsive to feeling where Monroe appears haphazard and oblivious. Novak is the epitome of every small-town waitress or beauty contest winner who thought of being in the movies. Despite a thorough attempt by Columbia to glamorize her, she never lost the desperate attentiveness of someone out of her depth but refusing to give in. Her performances improve with time so that ordinary films come to center on her; even Vertigo, Hitchcock’s masterpiece, owes some of its power to Novak’s harrowing suspension between tranquility and anxiety.

You’ve probably already discovered that life hands out a big load of lessons to be learned. Sometimes you have to do your homework over and over till you carve away the “obdurate material”—the stony cocoon—by which you have kept yourself in the dark. No one can do it for you. They can only help. Actually, that is the good news. You get to do the work, discover the a-ha’s and reap the joy as you make better and better choices that take care of both your grown-up self and the Little Girl Panty Wearer inside.

For decades Southie had been immigrant Irish against the world, fighting first a losing battle againsnt shameful discrimination from the Yankee merchhants who had run Boston for centuries and then another one against mindless bureaucrats and an obdurate federal judge who imposed school busing on the "town" that hated outsiders to begin with. Both clashes were the kind of righteous fight that left residents the way they liked to be: bloodied but unbowed. The shared battles reaffirmed a view of life: never trust outsiders and never forget where you come from.

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Adams had little experience working with others in a legislative setting, and his obdurate manner and natural impatience did not fully suit him for such an undertaking. Yet, his courtroom skills and his pluck or “pertness,” as he referred to it, served him well. Mostly, however, Adams’s star rose because of other factors. The very force of his intellect was crucial to his emergence as an important force in Congress. At each step of his ascent, Adams’s acuity and his imposing intellectual grasp had impressed others.

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Hitler is not in a position to listen to us; he is obdurate, and as such he must compel us to listen-it's that way round.

Amid them and amid the obdurate angels and the wildflowers pushing up through the earth, Richard could again be one among many.

Prologue to David Garrick's Lethe   Prodigious Madness of the writing Race! Ardent of Fame, yet fearless of Disgrace. Without a boding Fear, or anxious Sigh, The Bard obdurate sees his Brother die. Deaf to the Critic, sullen to the Friend, Not One takes Warning, by Another's End. Oft has our Bard in this disastrous Year, Beheld the Tragic Heroes taught to fear. Oft has he seen the Poignant Orange fly, And heard th' ill-omened Catcall's direful Cry. Yet dares to venture on the dangerous Stage, And weakly hopes to 'scape the Critic's Rage. This night he hopes to show that farce may charm, Though no lewd hint the mantling virgin warm, That useful truth with humour may unite. That

Jinnah proved obdurate: he was determined to obtain Pakistan. The Muslim League leader declared 16 August 1946 as ‘Direct Action Day’ to drive home this demand. Thousands of Muslim Leaguers took to the streets in an orgy of violence, looting and mayhem, and 16,000 innocents were killed in the resulting clashes, particularly in Calcutta.

A weakly wilful being struggling to get obdurate things round impossible corners—in that symbol Mr. Polly could recognise himself and all the trouble of humanity.

Secularized young men eagerly entering the modern world with their shorn beards found it in practice frustratingly obdurate and alienating: ‘the kingdom of bribes’, as the critic (and close friend of Herzen) Vissarion Belinsky denounced it in 1841, ‘religious indifference, licentiousness, absence of any spiritual interests, triumph of shameless impudent stupidity, mediocrity, ineptitude, where everything human, intelligent, noble, talented is condemned to suffer oppression, torment, censorship’.

Be obdurately determined to bring your courage to the world.

Over the years, as I listened to the engineering give-and-take over the question of artificial life-forms, I kept coming up against something obdurate inside myself, some stubborn resistance to the definition of “life” that was being promulgated. It seemed to me too reductive of what we are, too mechanistic. Even if I could not quite get myself to believe in God or the soul or the Tao or some other metaphor for the ineffable spark of life, still, as I sat there high in the balcony of the Stanford lecture hall, listening to the cyberneticists’ claims to be on the path toward the creation of a sentient being, I found myself muttering, No, that’s not right, we’re not just mechanisms, you’re missing something, there’s something else, something more. But then I had to ask myself: What else could there be?

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The ideal location I found for the first Trader Joe’s was a 1911 bottled water plant on Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena. My real estate broker—and a de facto member of Trader Joe’s top management—had one hell of a time negotiating the lease with an obdurate lawyer, Patrick James Kirby. Kirby was so tough that later Alice said if she ever got a divorce, she was going to hire Kirby. He liked that.

We know that, when teaching students, only the utmost care and patience will ever work: we must never raise our voices, we have to use extraordinary tact, we must leave plenty of time for every lesson to sink in, and we need to ensure at least ten compliments for every one delicately inserted negative remark. Above all, we must remain calm. And yet the best guarantee of calm in a teacher is a relative indifference to the success or failure of his or her lesson. The serene teacher naturally wants for things to go well, but if an obdurate pupil flunks, say, trigonometry, it is—at base—the pupil’s problem. Tempers remain in check because individual students do not have very much power over their teachers’ lives; they don’t control their integrity and are not the chief determinants of their sense of contentment. An ability not to care too much is a critical aspect of unruffled and successful pedagogy.

Realism can be punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse. It is difficult to go about life wearing probabilistic glasses, as one starts seeing fools of randomness all around, in a variety of situations—obdurate in their perceptional illusion. To start, it is impossible to read a historian’s analysis without questioning the inferences:

Hild looked down at her reflection. A tall, obdurate woman gazed back. Blue-green veil band embroidered with gold-and-silver thread, sewn with lapis and agate and beryl. Agate swinging from each ear. Heavy yellow gold resting between her breasts. Dyed-blue girdle. A matching purse with ivory lid.

It is unlikely that our discussion will tell working scientists anything they do not already know. We would not presume, for example, to reveal hitherto undiscovered facts about the details of scientific work to the subjects of our study. It is clear (as we show) that most members of our laboratory would admit to the kinds of craft activities which we portray. At the same time, however, our description of the way in which such craft activities become transformed into “statements about science” might constitute a new perspective on what working scientists know to be the case. We anticipate that hackles might rise where participants hold an obdurate commitment to descriptions of scientific activity formulated in terms of research reports. Often this commitment stems from the perceived utility of such statements in procuring funds or claiming other privileges.

Feeling pleased with himself for overcoming the obdurate gate-rats to fulfil his warlord’s instructions so masterfully, he waited expectantly for the high praise that would soon be heaped upon his tireless shoulders. ‘Fool-fool!’ yelled Queek, mere inches from Ska’s ears. ‘What use are you that cannot open simple door? Time wastes. Get worthless meat moving or I take every minute’s delay from your lice-ridden hide.’ Ska’s head bobbed enthusiastically. ‘Yes-yes, I obey.

Even though laughter is still the sign of force, of the breaking out of blind and obdurate nature, it also contains the opposite element - the fact that through laughter blind nature becomes aware of itself as it is, and thereby surrenders itself to the power of destruction.

Most people become who they are because of the circumstances they are exposed to. Constant exposure to gruesome experiences can obdurate the meek.

The unlettered does his utmost to distance a sign-post because most host almost a legion of inexplicable inscriptions. The illiterate is considerate of his deficiency and makes a deliberate effort commensurate with his status lest he is deemed obdurate.

We cannot avoid them, and when we see them, we do not have the right to be indifferent. Woe to us, if by our silence or inertia the wicked become obdurate in their malice and eventually triumph.” “It is true, we cannot be indifferent in the face of evil or error,” resumed Francis, “but we should be neither irritated nor dismayed by it. Such dismay and irritation will only restrict the charity within us or in others. Rather must we learn to see evil and error as God sees them. It is precisely that which is so difficult. Where we would tend to see an error to be condemned and to be punished, God sees, from the very start, a suffering to be alleviated.

During the so-called Dark Ages, in fact, the only penalty for obdurate heresy was excommunication.

People had always decided how his body would be used, and although he knew that Harold and Andy were trying to help him, the childish, obdurate part of him resisted: he would decide. He had such little control over his body anyway-how could they begrudge him this?

To cling to one partial view, one limited and conditioned opinion, and to treat this as the ultimate answer to all questions is simply to “obscure the Tao” and make oneself obdurate in error.

When the passive light, termed in scripture 'darkness,' became blended and unified with the active light, there were myriads of spiritual beings or existences, part of whom were fully developed and ready for incarnation, the rest but imperfectly so. Believing that the light and darkness were antagonistic in nature and principle, there arose a division of opinion amongst them, some declaring themselves partisans of light, others its opponents and advocates of darkness. When the mediating Logos had blended light and darkness and thus symbolized the perfect unity of the divine essence, the advanced and enlightened amongst them embraced and received the fact, whilst those only partially developed remained obdurate in their ideas and opinions and thus by their contrariety and differences of thought and the contentions and quarrels that arose therefrom, Gehenna or Hell came into existence.

Obdurate, you say: We are darkness. We are the city whose brightness blots the stars from night

Ordinary art is what I am making. I am a regular person doggedly making ordinary art. But as Ted Orland and David Bayles point out in their book Art and Fear, “ordinary art” is the art that most of us, those of us not Proust or Mozart, actually make. If Proust-like genius were the prerequisite for art, then statistically speaking very little of it would exist. Art is seldom the result of true genius; rather, it is the product of hard work and skills learned and tenaciously practiced by regular people. In my case, I practice my skills despite repeated failures and self-doubt so profound it can masquerade outwardly as conceit. It’s not heroic in any way. To the contrary, it’s plodding, obdurate effort. I make bad picture after bad picture week after week until the relief comes: the good new picture that offers benediction. The early success I enjoyed in this new project gave me a false sense that not only would the good pictures come easily, but also that I understood my reasons for doing them in the first place. In general, I am past taking pictures for the sake of seeing how things look in a photograph, although sometimes, for fun, I still do that. These days I am more interested in photographing things either to understand what they mean in my life or to illustrate a concept.

How obdurate and strong he seemed, how seductive; how completely mine.

Hernando de Talavera. Talavera, head of the Jeronimite order and probably a converso himself, was noted for his spiritual purity and devotion; contemporaries described him as “Christlike in appearance, way of life, and attitude.”6 While Talavera supported the death penalty for obdurate heretics and did not object to the idea of some kind of Inquisition,

Two parts cynical to one part obdurate.

For Hamilton, his encounters with the two obdurate generals strengthened his preference for strict hierarchy and centralized command as the only way to accomplish things—a view that was to find its political equivalent in his preference for concentrated federal power instead of authority dispersed among the states.

Each one of us takes a breathtaking private voyage to unravel truth, understand our strengths and limitations, and gain self-knowledge. Truth is not dogma. We must use our minds as a machete to hack away at convention. Questioning is a form of devotion. Integrity requires acknowledgement of doubt. Truth surfaces from the unutterable impressions playing at the fringes of our conscious awareness. Writing and talking are methodical means to express concepts, mental devices intended to place our maturing thoughts in order. Writing enables us to structure our subjective expressions and organize personal doubts. Words themselves are not obdurate truths. Universal truths existed long before words. The word is merely humankind’s receptacle to comprehend truth, quantify reservations, and attempt to reject falsities. We often glean truth through the vessels of exaggeration and extrapolation. By looking at the world squinty-eyed through a magnifying glass, we sometimes see in the cross hairs the fine grains of impenitent truth.

I am my father’s daughter. Two parts cynical to one part obdurate.

In lieu of loving the world twice as hard, I care, in the end, about expressing my obdurate singularity at any cost. I love this hard and unyielding part of myself more than any other reward the world has to offer a newly brightened and ingratiating demeanor, and I will bear any costs associated with it.