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

• 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

  68 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

  61 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

• 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

• ..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.

  168 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Yo, cop. We're heading for Screamer's. You wanna come?" Butch looked up at the doorway. Vishous was in the hall with Rhage and Phury behind him. The vampires had expectant looks on their faces, like they honestly wanted to hang with him. Butch found himself grinning like the new kid who didn't have to sit alone at lunch after all.

  J.R. Ward

  Kids, Lunch, Vampire

  J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4”, p.516, Penguin

  0 Copy quote

  Report Show source

• Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.

  Terry Pratchett

  Morgues, Simile

  0 Copy quote

  Report

• With that, the poignant charm vanished. Inside the fifth machine, all was rampant malignity. Deformed flowers thrust monstrous horned tusks and trumpets ending in blaring teeth through the crimson walls, rending them; the ravenous garden slavered over its prey and every brick was shown in the act of falling. Amid the violence of this transformation, the oblivion of the embrace went on. The awakened girl, in all her youthful loveliness, still clasped in the arms of a lover from whom all the flesh had fallen. He was a grinning skeleton.

  Angela Carter

  Girl, Wall, Flower

  0 Copy quote

  Report

• But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them. "Think of all the trouble it saves," the man explained, and his face looked as if he'd be grinning an evil grin--if he could grin at all. "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren't for that dreadful magic staff, you'd never know how much time you were wasting.

  Norton Juster

  Jobs, Men, Thinking

  0 Copy quote

  Report

• You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

  Terry Pratchett

  Space, Dragons, Trying

  0 Copy quote

  Report

• I told them he'd be able to get you to go out." Rianne folded her winnings and tucked the bills into her blazer pocket. "Look at him." "He's right here, Ri," Carla murmured, shooting Keenan an apologetic look. "We've tried to teach her manners, but..." She shrugged. "It's like housebreaking a dog. If we'd had her when she was a puppy, maybe." Rianne smacked her on the arm, but she was grinning. "Woof, woof.

  Melissa Marr

  Dog, Winning, Pockets

  0 Copy quote

  Report