Insolent Quotes - Page 2

• The mind that is much elevated and insolent with prosperity, and cast down with adversity, is generally abject and base.

  Epicurus

  Adversity, Mind, Prosperity

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• Good men do not always have grace and favor, lest they should be puffed up, and grow insolent and proud.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Men, Grace, Good Man

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• Many persons, when exalted, assume an insolent humility, who behaved before with an insolent haughtiness.

  William Shenstone

  Humility, Haughtiness, Assuming

  William Shenstone (1764). “The Works in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq: Most of which Were Never Before Printed ...”, p.210

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• This Old Testament - containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality - is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy - if there were anyone to be blasphemed - blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.

  Annie Besant

  Errors, Law, Old Testament

  Annie Besant (2014). “The Christian Creed: Or, What it is Blasphemy to Deny”, p.56, The Floating Press

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• If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.

  Aristotle

  Work, Men, Given

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.3164, Delphi Classics

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• The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous - cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity.

  Voltaire

  Hatred, Prosperity, Greedy

  "'Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations' ('Essay on the Manners of Nations')". Book by Voltaire. Introduction, XLII, 1756.

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• The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Money, Selfish, Adversity

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• When the People contend for their Liberty, they seldom get anything by their Victory but new masters. Power is so apt to be insolent and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good Terms.

  Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet

  People, Victory, Liberty

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• Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for its possessors are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence every thing seems to be purchasable by it.

  Aristotle

  Way, May, Wealth

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1823). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.167

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• Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Two, Compliment

  Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910”, p.16, University of Georgia Press

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• Power is always right, weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.

  Noah Webster

  Power, Weakness, Always Wrong

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• Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

  Thomas Paine

  Vanity, Age, Generations

  Thomas Paine (1996). “Rights of Man”, p.9, Wordsworth Editions

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• Victory is by nature insolent and haughty.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Nature, Victory, Haughty

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• Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Opportunity, Knowing

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…”, p.16, e-artnow

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• I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.

  Horace Walpole

  Air, Vulgar, Nations

  Letter to Hannah More, 14 October 1787, in 'Letters'

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• it was always insolent for a common man to take a chair in the presence of a lady - the word LADY, we may be sure, capitalized in her mind, and denoting not sex but rank.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Sex, Men, Mind

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher “Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life”

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• I am shocking, impertinent and insolent that's how it is.

  Brigitte Bardot

  Shocking

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• Grass is the least rewarding of all status symbols... The grass does nothing but drink money, exhaust energies, crush spirits, destroy sleep, create tensions and interfere with the watching of baseball games, and sprout insolent signs ordering humans to keep off it.

  Russell Baker

  Crush, Baseball, Sleep

  Russell Baker (1965). “All Things Considered”

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• The Christian soldier must avoid two evils - he must not faint or yield in the time of fight, and after a victory he must not wax insolent and secure. When he has overcome, he is so to behave himself as though he were presently again to be assaulted. For Satan’s temptations like the waves of the sea, do follow one in the neck of the other

  George Downame

  Christian, Fighting, Two

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• For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face. "So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing." "Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my doing." "Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom." "Dark and sinister man,“For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face. "Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee.

  James M. Barrie

  Dark, Men, Two

  James M. Barrie (2013). “Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) (Annotated Edition)”, p.135, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clouds, Sky, People

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• Had I known that the heart breaks slowly, dismantling itself into unrecognizable plots of misery... had I known yet I would have loved you, your brash and insolent beauty, your heavy comedic face and knowledge of sweet delights, but from a distance I would have left you whole and wholly for the delectation of those who wanted more and cared less.

  Maya Angelou

  Sweet, Distance, Heart

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• Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.

  Henry James

  Dream, Strong, Believe

  Henry James (2016). “The Daily Henry James: A Year of Quotes from the Work of the Master”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

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• Give Me Strength This is my prayer to thee, my lord---strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart. Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service. Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Prayer, Heart, Roots

  Rabindranath Tagore (2013). “Gitanjali - Song Offerings”, p.36, Read Books Ltd

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• If advertising has invaded the judgment of children, it has also forced its way into the family, an insolent usurper of parental function, degrading parents to mere intermediaries between their children and the market. This indeed is a social revoluation in our time!

  Jules Henry

  Children, Business, Parent

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