Fastidious Quotes

• The fastidious are unfortunate; nothing satisfies them.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Unfortunate

  "Fables (Book II)". Book by Jean de La Fontaine, 1668-1694.

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• Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."

  Cyril Connolly

  Two, People, Mind

  Cyril Connolly (1953). “Ideas and Places”, London, Weidenfeld

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• they who are not fastidious as to the means, seldom fail of securing the result they aim at.

  Fanny Fern

  Mean, Morality, Dishonesty

  FANNY FERN (1857). “FRESH LEAVES”, p.19

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• I'm terribly fastidious. I like symmetry and neatness, but my house is as chaotic as any other family's.

  Kevin McCloud

  House, Symmetry, Chaotic

  "Grand Designs Kevin McCloud: 'My House Is as Chaotic as Yours'". Interview with Judith Woods, www.telegraph.co.uk. October 27, 2010.

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• Whatever people may say, the fastidious formal manner of the upper classes is preferable to the slovenly easygoing behaviour of the common middle class. In moments of crisis, the former know how to act, the latter become uncouth brutes.

  Cesare Pavese

  Class, People, Behaviour

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• Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

  Mason Cooley

  Struggle, Taste, Enjoyment

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• That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Love, Book, Simple

  "On Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1831.

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• Those two are a fastidious couple. She's fast and he's hideous.

  Henny Youngman

  Funny, Couple, Humor

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• Children of the Nephilim," Magnus said. "Well, well. I don't recall inviting you." Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a white flag. "I have an invitation. These"--she indicated the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm--"are my friends." Magnus plucked the invitation out of her hand and looked at it with fastidious distaste. "I must have been drunk," he said. He threw the door open. "Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests." Jace looked at him, "Even if one of them spills something on my new shoes?" "Even then." - 219

  Cassandra Clare

  Children, Hands, Shoes

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• I'm a fastidious sort of fellow, fond of watermelon and buckbrush nuts.

  Edward Abbey

  Nuts, Fellows

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.16, RosettaBooks

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• A pretty wife is something for the fastidious vanity of a roue to retire upon.

  Thomas Moore

  Vanity, Wife, Retiring

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• I found for me that my safe place was work. I could control my environment. I became very fastidious and detailed, and wanted things a certain way.

  Marie Osmond

  Safe, Way, Environment

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• The politicians of New York as not so fastidious as some gentlemen are, as to disclosing the principles on which they act. They boldly preach what they practice...if they are defeated, they expect to retire from office. If they are successful, they claim, as a matter of right, the advantages of success. They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belongs the spoils of the enemy.

  William L. Marcy

  New York, Successful, Practice

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• If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Women, Race, Would Be

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.1931, e-artnow

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• Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Memories, Use

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• The etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year's Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?

  Judith Martin

  New Year, Years, People

  Judith Martin (2011). “Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (Freshly Updated)”, p.780, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Conversation, fastidious goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.

  Virginia Woolf

  Blood, Bricks, Goddess

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.918, Delphi Classics

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• It is not only a troublesome but slavish to be nice [fastidious].

  William Penn

  Nice, Being Nice, Troublesome

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• The fastidious are unfortunate: nothing can satisfy them.
  [Lat., Les delicats sont malheureux,
  Rien ne saurait les satisfaire.]

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Satisfaction, Unfortunate

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• People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Light, People, Finite

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1904). “The Logic of Hegel”

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• Literature is so common a luxury that the age has grown fastidious.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Luxury, Age, Literature

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.104

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• A fastidious taste is best indoors, away from nature and the city.

  Mason Cooley

  Cities, Taste

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• I change my hairstyle every day for the show, I'm fastidious and vain about my nails and teeth and grooming and makeup, but a perfect body, forget it. Dust to dust, wuggies to wuggies.

  Kathie Lee Gifford

  Makeup, Dust, Perfect

  Kathie Lee Gifford, Jim Jerome (1993). “I Can't Believe I Said That!: An Autobiography”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• The fastidious taste will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers seem to have affected.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Taste, Occasional, Slang

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• The mind is satisfied with phrased, but not the body, the body is more fastidious, it wants muscles. A body always tells the truth, that's why it's usually depressing and disgusting to look at.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Depressing, Mind, Looks

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