Tiresome Quotes - Page 2

• We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer Yes, but I did it for the money, satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Money, Men, Decay

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Wise, Intelligent, Men

  Desiderius Erasmus, Betty Radice (1990). “Praise of Folly”

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• She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.

  Amy Tan

  Character, Eye, Men

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• And yet, we know how fatal the pursuit of liveliness may be: it may result in ... tiresome acrobatics. ... Flashy effects distract the mind. They destroy their persuasiveness; you would not believe a man was very intent on ploughing a furrow if he carried a hoop with him and jumped through it at every other step. ... When virtuosity gets the upper hand of your theme, or is better than your idea, it is time to quit.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Believe, Men, Ideas

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• International friendly games are not worth the lives of the silk worms who perish to make the pennants. They do not even have the philanthropic excuse that softens the otherwise unendurable tedium of testimonial matches. Quite simply, they are rotten games staged to pick the public's pocket, tiresome red tape left over from an era when nations and players were still insular and therefore curious about each other's potential.

  Danny Baker

  Soccer, Football, Player

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• To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Food, Health, Exercise

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• The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Long, Fool, Disappear

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• Movies have kind of become a tad bit uninspired, in that the big studio movies are spending more money to chase the big money with all these franchises and superhero movies. Some of them have been great, but some of them are a little tiresome.

  Mark Wahlberg

  Superhero, Littles, Kind

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• As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

  Richard Rorty

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Swings

  "Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3". Book by Richard Rorty (Introduction), March 13, 1998.

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• Nothing is more tiresome than a superannuated pedagogue.

  Henry Adams

  Teaching

  Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S Grant, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Adams (2016). “Great American Lives: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, and The Education of Henry Adams”, p.1577, Open Road Media

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• A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

  Ouida

  Philosophy, Thinking, Pockets

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.6, Ouida

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• Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Travel, Journey, Land

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.203, University of Georgia Press

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• Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Photography, Portraits, Painting

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• Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man.

  Arthur Eddington

  Falling In Love, Love Is, Men

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• It's the task that's never started that's more tiresome.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Motivational, Tasks

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• Man ought always to have something that he prefers to life; otherwise life itself will seem to him tiresome and void.

  Johann Gottfried Seume

  Inspirational, Men, Void

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• The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ignorance, Ignorant, Depth

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• I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.

  James Anthony Froude

  Writing, Adventure, Mean

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The Nemesis of Faith”, p.2

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• The Canadian painter A. Y. Jackson noted that 'failure of sight' was a tiresome problem. He meant we should be able to look at our work-in-progress as if it were previously unseen.

  Robert Genn

  Sight, Progress, Looks

  Robert Genn (1996). “The Painter's Keys: A Seminar with Robert Genn”, p.21, Studio Beckett Publications

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• When a friend needs consoling, do not give in to the temptation of telling stories similar to theirs of disaster or bereavement. It is something people often do to show empathy but nothing is more tiresome than other people's problems when you want to focus on your own. Listening is by far the best form of consolation.

  Giles Andreae

  Grief, People, Giving

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• I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. You with the unpaid bill, Despair, You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, I will pay you in the grave, Death will listen to your stave.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Sweet, Reflection, Yield

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley; Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.307

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• So long as a novelist works selfishly for the pleasure of creating character and situation corresponding to his own illusions, ideals and intuitions, he will always produce something worth while and natural. Directly he takes himself too seriously and begins for the alleged benefit of humanity an elaborate dissection of complexes, he evolves a book that is more ridiculous and tiresome than the most conventional cold cream girl novel of yesterday.

  Willa Cather

  Girl, Book, Character

  Willa Cather (1990). “Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters”, p.59, U of Nebraska Press

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• On a series of apparently tiresome, flat sittings seeming to lead nowhere - one day something happens, the touches seem to 'take', the deaf canvas listens, your words flow and you have done something.

  Walter Sickert

  One Day, Sitting, Done

  Wendy Baron, Walter Sickert (2006). “Sickert: Paintings and Drawings”, p.91, Yale University Press

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• Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told that she must occupy a Place Apart - and indeed, so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. You practically never see a happy cow in India.

  Stella Benson

  Fall, Men, Race

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• This perpetual round of constrained civilities to persons quite indifferent to us, is the most provoking and tiresome thing in theworld, but it is unavoidable in a country town, where everybody is known.... 'Tis a most shocking and unworthy way of spending our precious irrecoverable time, to those who know not its value.

  Fanny Burney

  Country, Time, Way

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