536 Quotes About Essence

The intellectual ... may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence.

The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

I'm interested in the essence of things. If you pare things down, what's left? It's like I'm trying to describe the soul to an alien.

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

Mystery is the essence of divinity

You're in essence going to shoot in the head a $626 million industry. It doesn't make any sense . . . You're sending the message that foreigners need not apply. I just think it's one of the most perverse, and poorly thought through and counterproductive pieces of legislation you could imagine.

Losing innocence. Remembering Heaven. That was the essence of Hell

There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work.

The right of election is the very essence of the constitution.