Indifferent Quotes - Page 5

• The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.

  Josephine Winslow Johnson

  Heart, Earth, Unbearable

  Josephine Winslow Johnson (1934). “Now in November”, p.114, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Alice was scrutinizing my boring jeans-and-a-T-shirt outfit in a way that made me self-conscious. Probably plotting another makeover. I sighed. My indifferent attitude to fashion was a constant thorn in her side. If I'd allow it, she'd love to dress me everyday―perhaps several times a day―like some oversized three-dimensional paper doll.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Fashion, Attitude, Self

  Stephenie Meyer (2008). “Eclipse”, Little Brown & Company

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• So You Want to Know All about her. Who she really is. (Was?) Why she swerved off the high road. Hard left to nowhere, recklessly indifferent to me. Hunter Seth Haskins, her firstborn son. I've been chocking that down for nineteen years. Why did she go on her mindless way, leaving me spinning in a whirlwind of her dust?

  Ellen Hopkins

  Son, Dust, Years

  Ellen Hopkins (2012). “Ellen Hopkins: Crank Trilogy”, p.1031, Simon and Schuster

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• Zakath's face grew thoughtful. "You know something, Garion?" he said. "Man thinks he owns the world, but we share it with all sorts of creatures who are indifferent to our overlordship. They have their own societies, and I supposed even their own cultures. They don't even pay attention to us, do you?" "Only when we inconvenience them...It teaches us humility," Garion agreed.

  David Eddings

  Humility, Thoughtful, Men

  David Eddings (1991). “The Seeress of Kell”, Del Rey

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• Silence fell between the four of them as they looked up at the sky. There was no sign of movement, the stars stared back, unblinking, indifferent, unobscured by flying friends. Where was Ron? Where were Fred and Mr Weasley? Where were Bill, Fleur, Tonks, Mad Eye, Mundungus?

  J. K. Rowling

  Stars, Eye, Sky

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, p.69, Pottermore

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• People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Pain, Heart, Reality

  Jeanette Winterson (1985). “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit”

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• Margaret found that the indifferent, careless conversations of one who, however kind, was not too warm and anxious a sympathizer, did her good.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Kind, Found, Conversation

  Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1855). “North and South”, p.364

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• The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Stupid, Hands

  Oscar Wilde (2018). “Oscar Wilde Collection”, p.11, Youcanprint

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• One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

  Aldous Huxley

  Thinking, Two, Self

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• He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn’t evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.

  Karl Marlantes

  Caring, Men, Evil

  Karl Marlantes (2010). “Matterhorn”, p.264, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Hate, Selfish, Joy

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• Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Sleep, Thinking

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• As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.

  E. M. Forster

  Travel, Florence, Ease

  E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.53, Courier Corporation

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• Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one's own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one's own.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Luxury, Lazy, Desire

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• Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.

  Erica Jong

  Marriage, Loyalty, World

  Fear of Flying ch. 10 (1973)

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• To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.

  Dalai Lama

  Giving Up, Goal, Challenges

  Dalai Lama (2012). “Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World”, p.97, Random House

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• To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

  Henry Miller

  Fate, Men, Medicine

  Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi (Second Edition)”, p.38, New Directions Publishing

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• They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wise, Men, Soul

  Anton Chekhov (2009). “Selected Stories of Anton Chekov”, p.104, Modern Library

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• There... Poor little things. You see them? Standing with their numbers on their blank, indifferent faces, Nuremberg in miniature, the ranks of painted wooden men... Poor dominoes. Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers down it goes.

  Alan Moore

  Men, Numbers, Long

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• All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already two months before and, poor as I am, I bought myself an excellent revolver and loaded it the same day. But two months had elapsed and it was still lying in the drawer. I was so utterly indifferent to everything that I was anxious to wait for the moment when I would not be so indifferent and then kill myself. Why -- I don't know.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Stars, Lying, Night

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2012). “The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky”, p.266, Modern Library

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• We are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise are we the children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos.

  Colin Meloy

  Beautiful, Children, Pain

  "Wildwood". Book by Colin Meloy, August 30, 2011.

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• Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim.

  Thomas Mann

  Sight, People, Ticklish

  Thomas Mann, Stanley Appelbaum (1995). “Death in Venice”, p.41, Courier Corporation

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• Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

  Susan Sontag

  People, Safe, Feels

  "Regarding the Pain of Others".

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• If one's intellectual equipment was not great, one's spiritual experience not deep, the result of doing one's very best could only seem very lightweight in comparison with the effort involved. But perhaps that was not important. The mysterious power that commanded men appeared to him to ask of them only obedience and the maximum of effort and to remain curiously indifferent as to the results.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Spiritual, Men, Effort

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• Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one.

  Anne Sexton

  Prayer, Heart, Needs

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