Grinning Quotes

• Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

  Edward Abbey

  Animal, Hunting, Moral

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.38, RosettaBooks

  14 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.

  Terry Pratchett

  Trust, Pyramids, Smirk

  45 Copy quote

  Report

• War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

  Winston Churchill

  Smile, Peace, War

  6 Copy quote

  Report

• If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Life, Smile

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.424, Modern Library

  69 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.

  Sylvia Plath

  Loneliness, Dark, Long

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.19, Anchor

  62 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• "All right", said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

  Lewis Carroll

  Cat, Tails, Gone

  1865 The disappearance of the Cheshire Cat. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ch.6,'Pig and Pepper'.

  12 Copy quote

  Report Show source
• 

  If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

  Maya Angelou

  Love, Funny, Life

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.424, Modern Library

  57 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.

  Plautus

  Men, Delay, World

  14 Copy quote

  Report

• Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. ... What I feel most moved to write, that is banned - it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Writing, Doors

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, G. Thomas Tanselle, Hershel Parker (1988). “Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition”, p.630, Northwestern University Press

  3 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

  William Shakespeare

  Song, Imagination, Gorges

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 1, l. [201]

  18 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• The general at the radar screenRubbed his hands with glee,And grinning pressed the buttonAnd started world war three.

  Roger McGough

  War, Hands, Glee

  3 Copy quote

  Report

• God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

  Sylvia Plath

  Loneliness, Party, Grief

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.19, Anchor

  3 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Melancholy sees the worst of things, things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Beautiful, Skulls, Looks

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.52

  8 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• ..we wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes- this debt we pay to human guile; with torn and bleeding hearts we smile.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Smile, Lying, Eye

  1895 'We Wear the Mask', stanza 1.

  169 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Something of a person's character may be observed by how they smile. Some never smile they only grin.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Smile, Character, May

  2 Copy quote

  Report

• Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

  Sylvia Plath

  Loneliness, Self, Joy

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.31, Anchor

  5 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

  William Shakespeare

  Laughing, Favour, Important Hamlet

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 1, l. [201]

  7 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• In my own case, I had to train myself out of that phony smile, which is like a nervous tic on every teenage girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My 'dream' action for the women's liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their 'pleasing' smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Smile, Girl, Dream

  SHULAMITH FIRESTONE (1970). “THE DIALECTIC OF SEX: THE CASE FOR FEMINIST REVOLUTION”

  56 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Suddenly you're surrounded by strangers who want something from you. The thing is, they don't know what they want, and you don't know what they want, unless it's an autograph, and you just sort of stand there grinning at one another

  Parker Stevenson

  Want Something, Stranger, Want U

  2 Copy quote

  Report

• Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Stars, Cutting, Roots

  34 Copy quote

  Report

• If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Lying, Writing, Men

  5 Copy quote

  Report

• “Bella, I've already expended a great deal of personal effort at this point to keep you alive. I'm not about to let you behind the wheel of a vehicle when you can't even walk straight. Besides, friends don't let friends drive drunk,” he quoted with a chuckle. I could smell the unbearably sweet fragrance coming off his chest. “Drunk?” I objected. “You're intoxicated by my very presence.” He was grinning that playful smirk again.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Sweet, Smell, Drunk

  "Twilight". Book by Stephenie Meyer, October 5, 2005.

  2 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely," said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. "But I must say, Ginevra's dress is far too low-cut." Ginny glanced round, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again.

  J. K. Rowling

  Cutting, Dresses, Auntie

  12 Copy quote

  Report

• Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.

  Terry Pratchett

  Morgues, Simile

  0 Copy quote

  Report

• Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Real, Reflection, Expression

  3 Copy quote

  Report