1.
I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity.
Alexander the Great
I would rather experience a brief yet illustrious life than an extended one of insignificance.
2.
It is human nature to instinctively rebel at obscurity or ordinariness.
Taylor Caldwell
3.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
George Eliot
4.
Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life
Protagoras
5.
Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.
Lionel Trilling
6.
Art will never come except from some small disregarded corner where an isolated and inspired man is studying the mysteries of nature.
Jean-Francois Millet
7.
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
Aldous Huxley
8.
Piracy is not the problem, obscurity is.
Seth Godin
9.
There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition
Blaise Pascal
10.
The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity.
Tim O'Reilly
11.
Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.
Julius Caesar
12.
A man will work and slave in obscurity for ten years and then become famous in ten minutes.
Robert Ripley
13.
Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.
Ovid
14.
The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.
Charles Horton Cooley
15.
As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.
Protagoras
16.
Obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness.
Socrates
17.
Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
19.
The big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.
Cory Doctorow
20.
I never knew how good it is to be unknown until now. The last time I was unknown I was too busy trying to become known to realize the advantages of obscurity.
Alec Guinness
21.
He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well.
Ovid
22.
I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.
Tallulah Bankhead
23.
Artists are the best theologians. They feel things that are true before theologians can jargonize them into obscurity.
Tony Campolo
24.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.
James Joyce
25.
Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity.
Anna Komnene
26.
The changes in the human condition are uncertain and frequent. Many, on whom fortune has bestowed her favours, may trace their family to a more unprosperous station; and many who are now in obscurity, may look back upon the affluence and exalted rank of their ancestors.
Alexander Hamilton
27.
The origins of poetry are clearly rooted in obscurity, in secretiveness, in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.
Mary Ruefle
28.
Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.
Jim Carrey
29.
I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.
Joe Rogan
30.
Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if... a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity, that's all to the good.
Georges Braque
31.
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
32.
I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity.
Oliver Cromwell
33.
The line between greatness and obscurity is very, very small.
Peabo Bryson
34.
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
Quintilian
35.
One must choose between obscurity with efficiency, and fame with its inevitable collateral of bluff.
William McFee
36.
Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
Mark Twain
37.
I mean, you hear the word 'globalization' over and over and over again. Globalization, globalization, globalization. Rarely has a word gone so directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence.
Robert Reich
38.
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
39.
Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place.
Eric Clapton
40.
Obscurity often brings safety.
Aesop
41.
Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
Plutarch
42.
It is better to be famous than notorious, but better to be notorious than obscure.
James Kern Feibleman
43.
It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.
Robert A. Heinlein
44.
Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.
Nicolas Chamfort
46.
Obscurity brings safety.
Aesop
47.
The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.
Wassily Kandinsky
48.
Fame is fickle, but Obscurity is usually faithful to the end.
Mason Cooley
49.
My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.
Edward Gibbon
50.
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.
Walter Savage Landor