Indignity Quotes - Page 2

• I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Catholic, Thank God, Rosary

  "The Life of Hilaire Belloc". Book by Robert Speaight, 1957.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't minimize the terror factor. As you get older you get more and more frightened because the terrible indignities of old age become closer to you.

  Woody Allen

  Age, Frightened, Terrible

  "Woody Allen gives you two for one in Melinda and Melinda". Interview with Julian Roman, movieweb.com. March 17, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Disappointment, Silence, Personality

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.312, Courier Corporation

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• My kids hear me behind my door, giggling like an idiot, and they roll their eyes at the blatant indignity of it all.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Kids, Eye, Doors

  "Bill is Back (Thank You Berkeley Breathed)". Interview With Seira Wilson, www.amazonbookreview.com. October 21, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Empathising with the younger children on whom the same confidence trick was being imposed, I embarked on a crusade around the neighbourhood, telling all the kids that there was no Santa Claus. This reached the ears of the father of a neighbouring family, who reproved me for spoiling it for the little ones. Spoiling it! I could not understand what he meant. To my mind, they were being made fools of, and I was only saving them from this indignity.

  Barbara Smoker

  Children, Father, Kids

  8 Copy quote

• Most trouble is unnecessary. Between the indignity of being born and the agony of dying enough bad things must of necessity happen to people. But we can't be satisfied with that. We have to go to work and see how much additional trouble we can create. Misunderstanding, turmoil, effort put on all the wrong things, and then more misunderstanding.

  Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett

  Agony, People, Effort

  4 Copy quote

• These small indignities and minor cruelties take a toll. They add to the burden of stress and fatigue that is already present in the workplace and they have real consequences on the every day lives of workers.

  P. M. Forni

  Stress, Real, Tolls

  8 Copy quote

• We think of a feminist as someone a woman becomes in reaction to personal indignities and social injustices. But the truth is, such inequities only awaken her to the feminist she has always fundamentally been - that is, a person who understands that her first responsibility is to her own humanity. That's why, for my money, the first known use of the word 'feminist' is still the best, appearing in an 1895 book review: a woman who 'has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.

  Susan Faludi

  Book, Responsibility, Fighting

  21 Copy quote

• Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

  Rick Perlstein

  Jobs, Suffering, Knows

  4 Copy quote

• Survival often feels like an indignity.

  Guillermo del Toro

  Survival, Feels

  4 Copy quote

• I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon ... shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.

  Sitting Bull

  Hurt, War, Men

  "The Lance and the Shield" by Robert M. Utley, New York: Henry Holt and Co., (pp. 79-80), 1993.

  125 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't want to be ordinary. I'm willing to do the work. I'm willing to suffer the indignities of comedy because I want to be great. I don't want to just be good. I want to be great.

  Judd Apatow

  Suffering, Ordinary, Want

  "Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, and Roseanne Barr Talk Judaism, F-bombs, and Radical Feminism". Interview with Judd Apatow, www.elle.com. June 12, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What you accomplish in life is limited only by your imagination and the fear of reprisal. Life is too fleeting and unrewarding to have to live with the added anus of indignity. The denial of one's inevitable demise is what causes most of the astringent blandness in the world. When your existence ends most certainly in death, there is no such thing as 'going too far'. There are no 'lines' you should fear to cross except the finish line. Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing you could do.

  Jim Goad

  Imagination, Playing It Safe, Fleeting

  18 Copy quote

• [Humans'] capacity to intervene, to compare, to judge, to decide, to choose, to desist makes them capable of acts of greatness, of dignity, and, at the same time, of the unthinkable in terms of indignity.

  Paulo Freire

  Greatness, Judging, Dignity

  Paulo Freire (2000). “Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage”, p.53, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

  Nelson Mandela

  Pain, People, Suffering

  Nelson Mandela (2003). “Nelson Mandela: from freedom to the future : tributes and speeches”, Jonathan Ball Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I strongly believe that we can create a poverty-free world, if we want to.... In that kind of world, [the] only place you can see poverty is in the museum. When school children will be on a tour of the poverty museum, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition to continue in a massive way.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Children, Believe, School

  4 Copy quote

• There are real indignities and real problems when all facets of life are controlled –when to get up, to eat, to shower-and chemicals are put inside our bodies against our will.

  Judi Chamberlin

  Real, Body, Problem

  28 Copy quote

• Justice has often been forged from fires of indignities and prejudices suffered. Our triumphs that celebrate the freedom of choice are hallowed. We have arrived upon another moment in history when 'We the People' becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect.

  Arenda L. Wright Allen

  Gay, Fire, People

  "Read the Incredibly Moving Opinion From the Judge Who Just Struck Down Virginia’s Gay-Marriage Ban" by Mariah Blake, www.motherjones.com. February 14, 2014.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a dear and lovely disposition, and a most valuable one, that can brush away indignities and discourtesies and seek and find the pleasanter features of an experience.

  Mark Twain

  Optimistic, Lovely, Disposition

  Mark Twain (2010). “Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review”, p.62, Univ of Wisconsin Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Men, Phones, Cells

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.105, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.

  Max Lerner

  Past, Democracy, Done

  Max Lerner (1939). “It is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy”, p.87, Transaction Publishers

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The indignity of it!-
  With everything blooming above me,
  Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses,
  Whole fields lovely and inviolate,-
  Me down in the fetor of weeds,
  Crawling on all fours,
  Alive, in a slippery grave.

  Theodore Roethke

  Weed, Rose, Lovely

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.71, Anchor

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seems quite proper to fear achievement, which, after all, is proof that you've successfully moved an experience from the delightfully anticipated future into the forever and sadly lost past. Avoid as long as you can the ultimate indignity: a lifetime achievement award.

  Terry Rossio

  Past, Awards, Long

  4 Copy quote

• Boredom is the keynote of poverty - of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with - for where there is no money there is no change of any kind.

  Moss Hart

  Boredom, Poverty, Kind

  11 Copy quote

• Ridiculous to think what indignities I would suffer in silence, if I knew that I was to be rewarded with an oversize bucket of hot water," the magus said as he settled into the bath the servants had filled for him.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Thinking, Water, Silence

  4 Copy quote