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

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• Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.

  Terry Pratchett

  Trust, Pyramids, Smirk

  "Pyramids" by Terry Pratchett, Harper, (p. 171), January 2008.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 

  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

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• "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'.

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• 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

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• 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

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• The general at the radar screenRubbed his hands with glee,And grinning pressed the buttonAnd started world war three.

  Roger McGough

  War, Hands, Glee

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• 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

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• 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]

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• 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]

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• ..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.

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• 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”

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• 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

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• Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don't care for spill orange soda all over themselves.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Reading, Orange

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• We keep grinning 'til the weekend comes, just a pinch between your cheek and gum, all night long.

  Joe Walsh

  Night, Weekend, Long

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• [Chicago]: This vicious, stinking zoo, this mean-grinning, mace-smelling boneyard of a city: an elegant rockpile of a monument to everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Zoos, Stupid, Mean

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• Then his eyes focus on something over my shoulder, and he starts walking. I turn to see Uriah jogging from the elevator bank. He is grinning. “Heard a rumor you were a dirty traitor,” Uriah says. “Yeah, whatever,” says Zeke. They collide in an embrace that looks almost painful to me, slapping each other’s backs and laughing with their fists clasped between them.

  Veronica Roth

  Dirty, Eye, Laughing

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• My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

  Yann Martel

  Art, Ambition, Skulls

  Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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