Clever Quotes - Page 16

• A culture in which guilt is automatically assumed to be neurotic and unhealthy has devised a remarkably clever way of protecting its self-interest.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Self, Guilt, Way

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• To be a head boy, you have to be very clever, you have to be a scholar, and I was never a scholar in any shape or form.

  Hugh Laurie

  Boys, Shapes, Form

  Interview with Emma Thompson, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 30, 2008.

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  If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Change, Christian Inspirational, Presidential

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.135, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Intelligent, Valleys, Green

  "Culture and Value" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, (p. 76e), 1980.

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• I say let me never be complete, I say may I never be content,I say deliver me from Swedish furniture, I say deliver me from clever arts, I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth,I say you have to give up! I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may!

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Art, Giving Up, Fall

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• Twas a clever quibble. Here, a garment for it.

  William Shakespeare

  Garments

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• A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Wise, Spiritual

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• Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Cooking, Subtle

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• I am clever enough to know that I am clever.

  Mervyn Peake

  Enough, Knows

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• I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.

  Roseanne Barr

  Mom, Mother, Vacuums

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• Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

  Philip Pullman

  Beautiful, Butterfly, Eye

  Philip Pullman (1995). “Northern lights”

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• I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Lying, People, Interesting

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1896). “Recollections”, p.230, Library of Alexandria

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• I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.

  Henry James

  Girl, Strong, Thinking

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• If someone were to ask whether communications skills or meekness is most important to a marriage, I'd answer meekness, hands down. You can be a superb communicator but still never have the humility to ask, 'Is it I?' Communication skills are no substitute for Christlike attributes. As Dr. Douglas Brinley has observed, 'Without theological perspectives, secular exercises designed to improve our relationship and our communication skills (the common tools of counselors and marriage books) will never work any permanent change in one's heart: they simply develop more clever and skilled fighters!

  John Bytheway

  Communication, Book, Humility

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• I . . . am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever--& of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.

  Jane Austen

  People, Stories, Half

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• Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

  Oscar Wilde

  Depressing, Mean, Missing

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.383, Wordsworth Editions

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• The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

  Chinua Achebe

  Brother, Fall, Men

  Chinua Achebe (2009). “Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• Beware of the clever ones; the dumb ones are safer.

  Lilian Jackson Braun

  Dumb

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• Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Two, People, Kind

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• I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said 'that's clever it's an anagram of art' and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.

  Banksy

  Art, Years, Graffiti

  Banksy (2005). “Banksy: wall and piece”, Random House UK

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• there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

  Charles Bukowski

  Nice, Heart, Sleep

  Charles Bukowski (2016). “On Love”, p.207, Canongate Books

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• The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Children, Yield, Feet

  "The Sparrow". Book by Mary Doria Russell, October, 1996.

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• It seems to me,' said the other, 'That you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.' By George!' said Syme facing round and looking at him, 'What a clever chap you are!

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Insult, Said, Chaps

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.223, Simon and Schuster

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• His face had become very red and his mouth and fingers were sticky. He did not look either clever or handsome, whatever the Queen might say.

  C. S. Lewis

  Queens, Looks, Mouths

  C. S. LEWIS (1950). “THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE”

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• ...Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.

  E. Nesbit

  Book, Reading, Doors

  E. Nesbit (2013). “Delphi Complete Novels of E. Nesbit”, p.24, Delphi Classics

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