I really did have this powerful sense, when I was in New Orleans after the storm, of watching all these profiteers descend on Baton Rouge to lobby to get rid of the housing projects and privatise the school system – I thought I was in some science-fiction experiment.

Having passion does not mean you have to descend into bickering and fighting.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content… it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.

Who knows but I shall grow reasonable at last, descend from my ideal heaven to the real earth, marry, and – Oh Plato! – make a pudding?

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

As we descend deeper and deeper in this region its inhabitants become more and more modified, and fewer and fewer, indicating our approach towards an abyss where life is either extinguished, or exhibits but a few sparks to mark its lingering presence.

Earlier lives drift by on silver soles, and the shadows of the damned descend into these sighing waters.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

Lobbyists didn’t descend from a spaceship. They evolved organically from the way we do business.

The only certainty we have is that those who are certain of a way to arrive at worldly salvation, are committed enough to organize around this, and seek power to enforce it, will invariably descend into a bloody totalitarian fascism.

Concerned that others were not coming onto the summit and because I had no radio link to those below me, I began to wonder if there were difficulties down the mountain. I made the decision to descend.

It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.

Fear not, we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts.

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

In Jenny Offill’s remarkable first novel, ‘Last Things,’ 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her.

To some people, the impossible is impossible. One fine day, they wake up in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands, and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.

I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level.

It is from Shiith Ibn Adam that all humankind today is said to descend. It is also said that Balkh, the ‘Mother of All Cities’ as the first Arabs called it, a city once greater than Babylon and lovelier than Nineveh, is where Shiith died and was buried.

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

For a scientist, it is a unique experience to live through a period in which his field of endeavour comes to bloom – to be witness to those rare moments when the dawn of understanding finally descends upon what appeared to be confusion only a while ago – to listen to the sound of darkness crumbling.

To mourn is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it’s also to feel, quite powerfully, that you’re not allowed to descend into the deepest fathom of your grief – that to do so would be taboo somehow.

I see no faults in the Church, and therefore let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, or go to any other place. And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it.

Nature’s God really descends from an ancient Greek tradition that was passed along to the early modern philosophers. And these were quite radical thinkers who were really challenging the ways of thinking of their time and the established religion.

The missing toothbrush was nothing compared with the fact that the spacecraft was orientated to ascend, not descend. I would have gone up and up instead of going back down to the ground.

Darwin wasn’t just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes – he didn’t go far enough. We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.

And sometimes people say, ‘Oh well, we all descend from Adam and Eve.’ But do you descend from Charlemagne directly? Do you descend from Saint King Louis IX? I do.

In some of the great cities of Europe – Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Brussels – tourists bored with life above ground can descend below. All these cities have sewer museums and tours, and all expose their underbelly willingly to the curious. But not London, arguably the home of the most splendid sewer network in Europe.

Falling asleep is like landing a plane. It takes time. You’ve got to sort of gradually descend. I think one of the problems with insufficient sleep is people are not very good at predicting how poorly they are doing when they are under-slept.

Los Angeles, which is where I live, happens to be a great place for junk. People have a lot of it, and they sell it and trade it: At these big swap meets, many, many hundreds of dealers of junk will descend upon a football field on a Saturday and sell all their stuff.

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

Obviously I descend from Africa.

I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living.

I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.

Our prayer and God’s mercy are like two buckets in a well; while the one ascends the other descends.

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

Success won’t descend on you. You have to earn it.

My character in ‘Running With Scissors‘ is manic-depressive. She starts out as a wonderfully eccentric person, and then descends into a terrible illness.

Most Americans descend from the very people who built this country with their bare hands.