Meanness Quotes - Page 4

• Just as lavishness leads easily to presumption, so does frugality to meanness. But meanness is a far less serious fault than presumption.

  Confucius

  Justice, Doe, Faults

  Confucius “The Analects”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Facts, Argument, Certain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.174, Library of America

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• There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal.

  George Santayana

  Stupidity, Ideals, Greater

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.59, 谷月社

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• No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Character, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.325, Vintage

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• I bring you this stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.

  Mark Twain

  Glasses, Hypocrisy, Giving

  R. Kent Rasmussen, Mark Twain (2013). “Dear Mark Twain: Letters from His Readers”, p.178, Univ of California Press

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• Money never can be well managed if sought solely through the greed of money for its own sake. In all meanness there is a defect of intellect as well as of heart. And even the cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Money, Heart, Greed

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• When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East--above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe--we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy.

  Victor Cousin

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Race

  Victor Cousin (1852). “Course of the History of Modern Philosophy”, p.32

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• Malice drinks one-half of its own poison.

  Seneca the Elder

  Forgiveness, Anger, Half

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• Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Men, Hypocrisy

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way”, p.34, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Party, Deception, Flattery

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.439

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• It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Sorrow

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ch. 4 (1792)

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• There is no vice of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excites so much indignation among his contemporaries, friends and neighbours, as his success. This is the one unpardonable crime, which reason cannot defend, nor humility mitigate.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Friends, Humility, Men

  "Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays".

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• The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other way.

  Rajneesh

  Jealousy, Men, Growing

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• Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.

  Jeannette Walls

  Cutting, Should Have, Wings

  Jeannette Walls (2009). “The Glass Castle: A Memoir”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

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• Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Heart, Bravery, Want

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)”, p.1182, Delphi Classics

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• Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Voice, House

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• It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of religious self-righteousness this article deplores is precisely the spirit in which it is written. Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness. (p. 146)

  Marilynne Robinson

  Religious, Atheist, Self

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• Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls... Even when they're being kind... especially when they're being kind.

  Alice Munro

  People, Soul, Be Kind

  FaceBook post by Alice Munro from Jun 25, 2010

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• Don’t you just hate nights like that, when you think over every mistake you’ve made, every hurt you’ve received, every bit of meanness you’ve dealt out? There’s no profit in it, no point to it, and you need sleep.

  Charlaine Harris

  Hurt, Hate, Mistake

  Charlaine Harris (2009). “Dead and Gone: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.32, Penguin

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• A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Running, Heart, Men

  "Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West". Book by Cormac McCarthy, Chapter II, 1985.

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• Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.

  William Hazlitt

  Weakness, Degrees, Liable

  William Hazlitt, William Ernest Henley (1902). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft. Liber amoris. Characteristics”

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• Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Wikis give us a place where anyone who is kind, thoughtful and intelligent can come and join us in building a better and more rational world. Jimmy Wales Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

  George Sand

  Kindness, Regret, Thoughtful

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• Each smallest act of kindness, reverberates across great distances and spans of time --affecting lives unknown to the one who’s generous spirit, was the source of this good echo. Because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage, years later, and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each expression of hatred, each act of evil.

  Dean Koontz

  Courage, Kindness, Distance

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• There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal, as if it were not a benefit and a joy to a man, being what he is, to know that many are, have been, and will be better than he.

  George Santayana

  Men, Stupidity, Joy

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.59, 谷月社

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• Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right.

  Dennis Prager

  Echoes, Leftists

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