Vague Quotes

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? (Edgar Allan Poe)
All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite. View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea. View quote
Pablo Picasso
When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. View quote
John Updike
The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful. View quote
Sherwood Anderson
Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. View quote
John Tukey
The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague. View quote
Bill Cosby
But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo the splendor of fame fades into nothing but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette. View quote
James Thurber
The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing. View quote
Aleister Crowley
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise. (Bertrand Russell)
The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers. View quote
Kenneth Clark
So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. View quote
Edgar Lee Masters
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. View quote
Theodore Dreiser
When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat. View quote
Lynn Abbey
As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities. View quote
Charles Darwin
I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or any presentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it - for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
A thrush, because I'd been wrong, Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only. View quote
Richard Wilbur
Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls, Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars - They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble, Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy That something new is coming to the world, The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming, And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones. (Stephen Vincent Benét)
Valuation is vague and arbitrary, when there is no assurance that it will be generally acquiesced in by others. View quote
Jean-Baptiste Say
Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life. View quote
André Malraux
The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such "revelations." View quote
André Malraux
Though my plans at the moment are vague, I can assure you that I'll never run for the Senate in New York. View quote
Laura Welch Bush