Famous quotes containing the word activity:
“What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?”
—Henry Miller (18911980)
“Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves ... and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.”
—Coleman Dowell (19251985)
“Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorized with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland he had built. Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity ... irresistibly reminiscent of the movement of maggots upon rotting meat.”
—Angela Carter (19401992)