Awkwardness Quotes

• Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Time, Awkward, Youth

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Parke Godwin (1848). “The Auto-biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry: from My Own Life”, p.59

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• My forte is awkwardness.

  Zach Galifianakis

  Forte

  "Megan Fox". Interview with Zach Galifianakis, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 22, 2010.

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• After every single take, I laugh. It's my own awkwardness and discomfort about being an actor.

  Seth Rogen

  Laughing, Actors, Discomfort

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• I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.

  Jane Austen

  Wish, Shy, Natural

  "Sense and Sensibility". Book by Jane Austen. Chapter 17, 1811.

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• Men lose more conquests by their own awkwardness than by any virtue in the woman.

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Men, Awkward, Virtue

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• Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

  Joseph Addison

  Confidence, Awkward, Literature

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1822). “The Spectator: with notes and illustrations. In six volumes”, p.46

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• Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

  Helen Keller

  Friendship, Sweet, Book

  "The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller, (Ch. 21), 1903.

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• Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.

  Ruta Sepetys

  Sometimes

  Ruta Sepetys (2011). “Between Shades of Gray”, p.107, Penguin

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• God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heaven, Awkward, Forgiving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2397, Delphi Classics

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• It has not been an easy cross to bear. It has caused considerable confusion. My husband constantly complained about the awkwardness of being married to a woman whom he called Sister.

  Sister Parish

  Sister, Husband, Confusion

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• Edward Heath and Richard Nixon took personal awkwardness with each other to new and excruciating levels.

  David Cameron

  Levels

  "Cameron declares Afghanistan a success at 9/11 memorial" by Nicholas Watt, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2012.

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• I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.

  Diane Arbus

  Mean Girls, Photography, Awkward

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• The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Fashion, Law, Awkward

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• Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Real, Dignity, Disadvantages

  Lord Chesterfield (2008). “The Modern Chesterfield”, p.250, Wildside Press LLC

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• Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspiration, Reality, Thinking

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• In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.

  Helen Keller

  Sweet, Book, Here I Am

  Helen Keller (2012). “The Story of My Life”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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• The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fashion, Past, Clothes

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.87, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness. There's love and emotion trying to express itself, but at the time, it just ends up being awkward.

  Ruta Sepetys

  Awkward, Trying, Emotion

  Ruta Sepetys (2011). “Between Shades of Gray”, p.107, Penguin

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• Anger is practical awkwardness.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Anger, Practicals

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• Order seems to come from searching for disorder, and awkwardness from searching for harmony or likeness, or the following of a system. The truest order is what you already find there, or that will be given if you don't try for it. When you arrange, you fail.

  Fairfield Porter

  Order, Trying, Failing

  Fairfield Porter, Ted Leigh, Justin Spring (2005). “Material witness: the selected letters of Fairfield Porter”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• Everywhere there is craft and technique; everywhere there is artistry and form. Art itself, technique, is ponderous and clumsy, and because of its awkwardness it obstructs that inner element.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Art, Technique, Elements

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• If you dont have anything nice to say... dead silence creates a lot awkwardness.

  Jeff Rich

  Nice, Silence, Ifs

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• The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Writing, Self, Hints

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.69

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• I have come to the belief that there is not merely an accidental relationship between bad writing and routine sociological research, but a wonderfully pure, integral relationship; the awkwardness is necessary and inevitable.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Writing, Routine, Research

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